Human Action Generation from Skeleton Sequences: A Comparative Study of Mathematical and Bio-Inspired Algorithms

In recent years, animation-based systems for human-computer interaction have attracted increasing attention. This work proposes a hybrid framework that combines mathematical modeling and bio-inspired optimization algorithms to generate motion sequences from skeletal data. The framework takes as input a complete skeletal sequence corresponding to a given action and optimizes both the number of key poses and the parameters of a homotopy-based formulation to generate transitions between consecutive poses. A homotopy-based approach is used to compute transitions between selected key poses. The homotopy parameter λ serves as an indicator of the completeness of the transition between pairs of key poses. Four nature-inspired optimization algorithms: Genetic Algorithm, Micro Genetic Algorithm, Particle Swarm Optimization, and Ant Colony Optimization were evaluated to determine the number of key poses and homotopy parameters that enable feasible motion generation. Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) is used as an external metric to assess the similarity between generated and reference sequences. It is important to note that Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) should be considered as a sequence similarity measure, as it does not explicitly evaluate perceptual realism or biomechanical plausibility. The framework was evaluated on 18 action sequences, demonstrating its ability to generate feasible motion transitions in 16 of the 18 evaluated actions when using PSO and MicroGA. For each pair of key poses, a fixed number of intermediate frames is generated to provide a uniform temporal discretization of the motion. The results suggest that homotopy-based methods provide a feasible approach for animation-based interaction systems.