Computational Studies of Human Motion: Part 1, Tracking and Motion Synthesis reviews methods for kinematic tracking of the human body in video. The review confines itself to the earlier stages of motion, focusing on tracking and motion synthesis. There is an extensive discussion of open issues. The authors identify some puzzling phenomena associated with the choice of human motion representation --- joint angles vs. joint positions. The review concludes with a quick guide to resources and an extensive bibliography of over 400 references. Computational Studies of Human Motion: Part 1, Tracking and Motion Synthesis is an invaluable reference for those engaged in computational geometry, computer graphics, image processing, imaging in general, and robotic.

This is the first book which informs about recent progress in biomechanics, computer vision and computer graphics – all in one volume. Researchers from these areas have contributed to this book to promote the establishment of human motion research as a multi-facetted discipline and to improve the exchange of ideas and concepts between these three areas. The book combines carefully written reviews with detailed reports on recent progress in research.

The new frontiers of robotics research foresee future scenarios where artificial agents will leave the laboratory to progressively take part in the activities of our daily life. This will require robots to have very sophisticated perceptual and action skills in many intelligence-demanding applications, with particular reference to the ability to seamlessly interact with humans. It will be crucial for the next generation of robots to understand their human partners and at the same time to be intuitively understood by them. In this context, a deep understanding of human motion is essential for robotics applications, where the ability to detect, represent and recognize human dynamics and the capability for generating appropriate movements in response sets the scene for higher-level tasks. This book provides a comprehensive overview of this challenging research field, closing the loop between perception and action, and between human-studies and robotics. The book is organized in three main parts. The first part focuses on human motion perception, with contributions analyzing the neural substrates of human action understanding, how perception is influenced by motor control, and how it develops over time and is exploited in social contexts. The second part considers motion perception from the computational perspective, providing perspectives on cutting-edge solutions available from the Computer Vision and Machine Learning research fields, addressing higher-level perceptual tasks. Finally, the third part takes into account the implications for robotics, with chapters on how motor control is achieved in the latest generation of artificial agents and how such technologies have been exploited to favor human-robot interaction. This book considers the complete human-robot cycle, from an examination of how humans perceive motion and act in the world, to models for motion perception and control in artificial agents. In this respect, the book will provide insights into the perception and action loop in humans and machines, joining together aspects that are often addressed in independent investigations. As a consequence, this book positions itself in a field at the intersection of such different disciplines as Robotics, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning. By bridging these different research domains, the book offers a common reference point for researchers interested in human motion for different applications and from different standpoints, spanning Neuroscience, Human Motor Control, Robotics, Human-Robot Interaction, Computer Vision and Machine Learning. Chapter 'The Importance of the Affective Component of Movement in Action Understanding' of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

The LNCS journal Transactions on Computational Science reflects recent developments in the field of Computational Science, conceiving the field not as a mere ancillary science but rather as an innovative approach supporting many other scientific disciplines. The journal focuses on original high-quality research in the realm of computational science in parallel and distributed environments, encompassing the facilitating theoretical foundations and the applications of large-scale computations and massive data processing. It addresses researchers and practitioners in areas ranging from aerospace to biochemistry, from electronics to geosciences, from mathematics to software architecture, presenting verifiable computational methods, findings, and solutions and enabling industrial users to apply techniques of leading-edge, large-scale, high performance computational methods. The 16th issue of the Transactions on Computational Science journal contains 11 extended versions of selected papers from Cyberworlds 2011, held in Banff, AB, Canada, in October 2011. The topics span the areas of haptic modeling, shared virtual worlds, virtual reality, human-computer interfaces, e-learning in virtual collaborative spaces, multi-user web games, cybersecurity, social networking, and art and heritage in cyberspaces.

Computational biomechanics is an emerging research field that seeks to understand the complex biomechanical behaviors of normal and pathological human joints to come up with new methods of orthopedic treatment and rehabilitation. Computational Biomechanics of the Musculoskeletal System collects the latest research and cutting-edge techniques used in computational biomechanics, focusing on orthopedic and rehabilitation engineering applications. The book covers state-of-the-art techniques and the latest research related to computational biomechanics, in particular finite element analysis and its potential applications in orthopedics and rehabilitation engineering. It offers a glimpse into the exciting potentials for computational modeling in medical research and biomechanical simulation. The book is organized according to anatomical location—foot and ankle, knee, hip, spine, and head and teeth. Each chapter details the scientific questions/medical problems addressed by modeling, basic anatomy of the body part, computational model development and techniques used, related experimental studies for model setup and validation, and clinical applications. Plenty of useful biomechanical information is provided for a variety of applications, especially for the optimal design of body support devices and prosthetic implants. This book is an excellent resource for engineering students and young researchers in bioengineering. Clinicians involved in orthopedics and rehabilitation engineering may find this work to be both informative and highly relevant to their clinical practice.

An examination of the ways human movement can be represented as a formal language and how this language can be mediated technologically. In Motion and Representation, Nicolás Salazar Sutil considers the representation of human motion through languages of movement and technological mediation. He argues that technology transforms the representation of movement and that representation in turn transforms the way we move and what we understand to be movement. Humans communicate through movement, physically and mentally. To record and capture integrated movement (both bodily and mental), by means of formal language and technological media, produces a material record and cultural expression of our evolving kinetic minds and identities. Salazar Sutil considers three forms of movement inscription: a written record (notation), a visual record (animation), and a computational record (motion capture). He focuses on what he calls kinetic formalism—formalized movement in such pursuits as dance, sports, live animation, and kinetic art, as well as abstract definitions of movement in mathematics and computer science. He explores the representation of kinetic space and spatiotemporality; the representation of mental plans of movement; movement notation, including stave notation (Labanotation) and such contemporary forms of notation as Choreographic Language Agent; and the impact of digital technology on contemporary representations of movement—in particular motion capture technology and Internet transfer protocols. Motion and Representation offers a unique cultural theory of movement and of the ever-changing ways of representing movement.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second Workshop on Human Motion, HumanMotion 2007, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 2007 in conjunction with ICCV 2007. The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on motion capture and pose estimation, body and limb tracking and segmentation and activity recognition.

Computational Human-Robot Interaction provides the reader with a systematic overview of the field of Human-Robot Interaction over the past decade, with a focus on the computational frameworks, algorithms, techniques, and models currently used to enable robots to interact with humans.

Simulation and modeling contribute to a broad range of applications in computational science and robotics technology, often addressing important design and control problems.This book presents a selection of papers from the International Workshop on Simulation and Modeling related to Computational Science and Robotics Technology (SiMCTR 2011), held at Kobe University, Japan, in November 2011.The workshop provided a forum for discussing recent developments in the growing field of engineering science and mathematical sciences, and brought together a diverse group of researchers in these areas to share and compare the different approaches to simulation and modeling in computational science and robotics technology. The workshop was also aimed at establishing collaborative links between engineering researchers of information and robotics technology (IRT) and applied mathematicians working in modeling and computational methods for design and control.