Artist‐Directable Motion Generation Using Overlapping Minimum Jerk Trajectories for Interactive Embodied Social Agent Adapting to Dynamic Environments

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the challenge of generating natural, interactive motion for embodied agents in social roles. We argue that such motion requires three key properties: Adaptability to dynamic environments and user interactions, switchability between different motions, and directability for expressing intentions and emotions. We propose a novel method that leverages overlapping minimum jerk trajectories to represent the motion of body parts, achieving both switchability and adaptability. Switchability is enabled by the ability to begin transitioning between minimum jerk trajectories at any moment, allowing the agent to smoothly change its motion. Adaptability is achieved by defining trajectory goals within a goal coordinate system relative to the target object or person. This dynamic goal ensures that motions remain contextually relevant as targets move. By representing motion as a sequence of minimum jerk trajectory goals, our approach shares similarities with keyframe animation, offering potential for directability. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method through various motion examples, evaluating its adaptability and switchability. Results indicate that our approach holds promise for generating natural and interactive agent behavior, albeit with some limitations in switchability requiring further investigation.