Virtual humanoids endowed withexpressive communication gestures :theHuGExproject

Thisproject aimsatthecreation ofa virtual humanoid endowed withexpressive gestures. Morespecifically, wefocus ourattention onexpressiveness (what typeofgesture: fluidity, tension, anger) andonitssemantic representations. Ourapproach relies onadata-driven animation scheme. From motion datacaptured thanks toanoptical system anddata gloves, wetrytoextract significant features ofcommunicative gestures, andtore-synthesize themafterward withstyle variation. Theproposed modelisapplied tothegeneration ofa setofFrenchSignLanguage (FSL)gestures. Withinthis framework, adatabase involving thewholebody, handsmotion andfacial expressions hasbeenbuiltTheanalysis ofthis database makespossible information retrieval aboutthe semantics aswellastheexecution style ofFSLgestures. These characteristics areintegrated ingesture synthesis models qualitatively evaluated bytheir intelligibility andtherealism of theproduced animations.