Ten Grand Challenges

Below is a non-official list of the grand character animation challenges that were identified by participants at the 2009 workshop.

1) Interaction with passive systems

Simulate complex interactions with passive objects.

  • Getting out of a hammock
  • Using a bike, skateboard or other equipment (getting on, riding, and getting off)
  • Dressing and undressing
  • walking on sand, or mattress, or through debris

2) Interaction with active systems

Controlling coupled systems, collaborating or competing

  • Dancing, wrestling, hugs
  • Dressing someone else (e.g., an uncooperative child)
  • Horse riding

3) Manipulation

Dexterous manipulation with non-trivial goals

  • Tying shoelaces
  • Folding a shirt
  • Handwriting

4) Agility

Agile control for difficult high-dimensional tasks

  • Parcours, obstacle course
  • tennis, soccer, rock climbing

5) Extreme Balance

  • Crossing a rope bridge
  • Break dancing

6) Contact Crowds

Crowds where contact between individuals is a dominant variable

  • Mosh pit
  • Tokyo subway

7) Animal kingdom

Controlling animals and arbitrary imaginary characters

  • Natural locomotion, different gaits

8) Graceful failure

  • Controlled falling and getting up

9) Modeling learning and aging

Adaping controllers to attributes of different characters

  • Learning to walk as a baby
  • Walking with arthritis, or injury

10) Believable characters

  • Simulated actors that are truley believable
  • cautious characters, non-omniscient characters (non-perfect knowledge of the environment)
  • Dealing with uncertainty
  • Turing test, believable actors