A dead-reckoning technique for streaming virtual human animation

In networked virtual environments (NVEs), users are represented by their virtual embodiments. The articulated structure of these embodiments introduces a new complexity in the representation and streaming of animations, especially when the number of participants in the simulation increases. This requires real-time algorithms to decrease the networking overhead. The dead-reckoning technique is a way to reduce the required bit rate, and has been used for simple nonarticulated objects in popular NVE systems. We introduce a dead-reckoning technique for articulated virtual human figures, based on the MPEG-4 body animation specification, using Kalman filtering