Human Motion: from Animation to Simulation

Zhmakin, Alexander I.Born 12.o3.1951, Leningrad, USSREducation: Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, graduated, 1974; PhD, 1980; Dr. Sci., 1992;Affiliation: 1) Ioffe Ohysical Technical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Leading Researcher;2) SoftImpact Ltd, Saint Peterburg, Russia, Scientific Consultant.

Human motion is the result of the muscular contraction and difficult to measure since muscular contractions are hidden and only surface motion could be observed. Simulation of human motion is the subject of study in a number of disciplines: Biomechanics, Robotics, Computer Vision, Control Theory, Neurophysiology, Medicine, Ergonomics .Since the author has never visited any of these fields, this review is indeed a passer-by's impression. On the other hand, he happens to be a human (who occasionally is moving) and, as everybody else, rates himself an expert in Applied Common Sense. Thus the author hopes that this view from the {em outside} will be of some interest not only for the strangers like himself, but for those who are {em inside} as well.Two flaws of the text that follows are inevitable. First, some essential issues that are well known to the specialists to discuss them may be missing. Second, the author probably failed to provide the uniform "level-of-detail" for this wide range of topics.