Modeling and generating whole body motion of balance maintenance

Abstract

Recently there have been many attempts in various fields to construct exact human models from the dynamical viewpoint. One of the most essential and important topics in such efforts is maintenance of balance. This paper models the balance maintenance motion which the human performs against a sudden and strong external disturbance, and discusses the method of generating the motion to maintain the balance. This model has two modes of maintaining balance: keeping the feet on the ground, and stepping. The model is compared to human balancing motion data acquired by a motion-capturing system and the validity of the model is verified. The parameters for motion generation are also determined. Optimization computation by the quadratic programming method is used in the motion generation, and efficient balance maintenance motion is generated as the optimal solution. By using this approach, whole body motions such as hip bending and arm swinging, which are often observed in human behavior, can be generated. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.