[其它] Interactive Climbing Route Design Using a Simulated Virtual Climber

彬彬

797 主题	1 听众	1万积分

资深设计师

Rank: 7 Rank: 7 Rank: 7

纳金币: 5568
精华: 0

电梯直达

楼主

发表于 2012-1-4 16:48:43 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

1 Introduction

Route setting is the process of creating climbing routes for the sport

of free climbing. By fastening climbing holds to artificial climbing

walls, a route emerges that provides a challenge for climbers. It

is a difficult process usually requiring either a very skilled climber

or a lot of time and test climbs. We propose a climbing route designer

that aims to enable even novice climbers to create interesting

and challenging routes by designing them on the computer using a

simulated climber to analyze the route and visualize the result.

While the user places climbing holds on the wall, the software tries

to find a route from the start configuration of the virtual climber to

a finish hold (see Figure 1). Each hand or foot is moved individually

and the static poses are tested for feasibility and scored for

difficulty. The progress of the search is visualized to give the user

immediate feedback. When finished, the climber is animated and

the resulting route is shown, including the difficulty of the individual

poses. In our current implementation static poses are calculated

by a heuristic, not using physics based calculation. Dynamics are

not considered and movement between the poses is simply interpolated.

Using this prototype of the virtual climber it was possible to

successfully test the user interface concept and collect a lot of feedback

and ideas. We conducted an informal user study with climbers

that had varying degrees of route setting experience.

2 Previous Work

Our work is inspired by recent design tools for novices [2009].

These tools run physical simulation in the background to provide

guiding information to the user during design. One example is

Sensitive Couture [2011] which helps garment design by running

drape simulation. Similarly, our system helps the design of climbing

routes by simulating climbing behavior in the background.

Ouchi et al. created a model for the climbing behavior of children

[2010]. They collected data from children climbing an array of

uniform holds with embedded sensors and built a model for the

prediction of climbing behavior. Unfortunately in free climbing the

route is defined by the selection and placement of thousands of very

differently shaped holds which define the movement of the climber.

This makes this data-driven approach infeasible for our purpose.

There have been attempts to make robots free climb on climbing

walls as opposed to using mechanics designed for a specific surface

like suction cups. One such algorithm was developed by Bretl et

al. for the LEMUR IIb robot [2006]. It finds transitions between

stances, associations of hands and feet to holds. Their approach is

very promising but unfortunately still too slow to be used interactively.

Kalisiak and Panne proposed a 2D, grasp-based motion planning

algorithm for virtual characters using pose heuristics [2001].

Phillips and Bradley created a system that generates chaotic variations

of existing routes which are defined by entering free-form

text for each hand move [2010]. In contrast, our system lets the

user design a route from scratch, defining every move to his liking.

3 Climbing Route Designer

Our software lets the user edit a climbing route by placing holds on

a flat climbing wall while information that is obtained through the

simulation of the virtual climber is visualized. At the beginning of

a session, the climber is already located on four pre-placed holds.

A path planning algorithm starts as soon as the user begins adding

holds to the wall. The search tries to generate movement for the

virtual climber so that it reaches the finish hold. It is defined as the

hold farthest away from the start configuration of the climber.

User Input: Normal holds can be placed by left-clicking while

right-clicking places a foot hold. Normal holds work for both hand

and feet while foot holds are for feet only. Clicking a hold again

deletes it. Holds can be dragged around. The user can switch to a

spray-paint mode which places normal and foot holds in a random

pattern while the user clicks and drags. There is also a button that

removes holds unused in the found climbing route.