Character motion control interface with hand manipulation inspired by puppet mechanism.

In this paper, we propose an interactive motion control interface with hand manipulation. Using fingers and hands, the user can simultaneously control a large number of degrees of freedom. Our interface is inspired by the control mechanism of a real puppet, which is suspended by about 10 strings attached to different parts of the puppet's body and the controller. The puppeteer can move the puppet in a variety of ways by holding and moving the controller with the right hand and manipulating the strings with the left hand. Our interface was designed based on this puppet mechanism. The character's pelvis translation and head/body rotation are controlled by the user's right hand, while the character's legs are controlled by the right hand fingers. The character's arms are controlled by the user's left hand and fingers. We have developed a method to control a character's motion based on this interface design. In this research, we used a depth-camera-based hand motion sensing device to implement our prototype. Using such a camera-based device obviates the need for the user to wear any device. However, the chosen technology has some limitations in hand motion sensing. Our method has been designed to work well even under these constraints. In this paper, we present our interface design and implementation, as well as the experimental results and a discussion thereof.