Efficient parallel dynamics computation of human figures

An efficient parallel algorithm for forward dynamics computation of human figures is proposed. The algorithm is capable of handling any kinematic chains including structure-varying ones. The asymptotic complexity of the algorithm is O(N) in serial computation and O(log N) in parallel computation on O(N) processors for most practical kinematic chains. The idea is to assemble a kinematic chain by adding the joints one by one and compute the constraint forces at the new joints using the principle of virtual work. The parallelism of the algorithm can be adapted for parallel processing systems with any number of processors by simply changing the assembly order. Simulation examples on an 8-node cluster demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.