Posture interpolation with collision avoidance

While interpolating between successive postures of an articulated figure is not mathematically difficult, it is much more useful to provide postural transitions that are behaviorally reasonable and that avoid collisions with nearby objects. We describe such a posture interpolator which begins with a number of pre-defined static postures. A finite state machine controls the transitions from any posture to a goal posture by finding the shortest path of required motion sequences between the two. If the motion between any two postures is not collision free, a collision avoidance strategy is invoked and the posture is changed to one that satisfies the required goal while respecting object and agent integrity