Real-time locomotion control by sensing gloves

Sensing gloves are often used as an input device for virtual 3D games. We propose a new method to control characters such as humans or animals in real-time by using sensing gloves. Based on existing motion data of the body, a new method to map the hand motion of the user to the locomotion of 3D characters in real-time is proposed. The method was applied to control locomotion of characters such as humans or dogs. Various motions such as trotting, running, hopping, and turning could be produced. As the computational cost needed for our method is low, the response of the system is short enough to satisfy the real-time requirements that are essential to be used for games. Using our method, users can directly control their characters intuitively and precisely than previous controlling devices such as mouse, keyboards or joysticks. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.