CMU FRC talk: Parameterizing Deformable Systems to Tame Complexity

Speaker: Doug James, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University
Date: Thursday, March 9, 2006

Abstract: The complexity and beauty of physical deformation phenomena in our lives is truly amazing. It fundamentally affects our appearance (skin, hair, clothing), our composition (protein folding), the sounds we make (talking, clapping), beauty in nature (irises blowing in the wind), our creations (aerospace design), and important decisions (surgical intervention). Computer modeling of deformation has made enormous progress, but the complexity of the world is humbling. We still do not know how to create immersive, realistic, real-time computer simulations of our ever-changing and deforming world.

In this talk, I will discuss our recent work on data-driven approaches for preprocessing and parameterizing deformable systems to enable greater interactivity. These techniques exploit the structure of deformable motion to build efficient output-sensitive algorithms in several key areas: subspace dynamics integration, output-sensitive collision processing, haptic force-feedback rendering, dynamic illumination modeling, and hardware-accelerated mesh animation.