Page 211 - DCAP208_Management Support Systems

Management Support Systems

Notes 12.2.11 Artificial Life for Graphics, Animation, Multimedia and Virtual
Reality

Some graphics researchers have begun to explore a new frontier—a world of objects of enormously
greater complexity than is typically accessible through physical modeling alone—objects that
are alive. The modeling and simulation of living systems for computer graphics resonates with
the burgeoning field of scientific inquiry called Artificial Life. Conceptually, artificial life
transcends the traditional boundaries of computer science and biological science. The natural
synergy between computer graphics and artificial life can be potentially beneficial to both
disciplines. As some of the demos here demonstrate, potential is becoming fulfillment.
The demos demonstrate and elucidate new models that realistically emulate a broad variety of
living things—both plants and animals—from lower animals all the way up the evolutionary
ladder to humans. Typically, these models inhabit virtual worlds in which they are subject to
physical laws. Consequently, they often make use of physics-based modeling techniques. More
significantly, however, they must also simulate many of the natural processes that uniquely
characterize living systems—such as birth and death, growth, natural selection, evolution,
perception, locomotion, manipulation, adaptive behavior, intelligence and learning.

Notes The challenge is to develop sophisticated graphics models that are self-creating,
self-evolving, self-controlling, and/or self-animating by simulating the natural
mechanisms fundamental to life.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
5. ................... can be defined as the act of taking in raw data and taking an action based on the
category of the pattern.
6. The ................... is a two dimensional function with 2 input variables: pixel position and 1
output variable: intensity of the pixel.
7. Any image can be represented as ................... array, where every element of that array
contains color information for one pixel.
8. Selection is based on measures of how well each ................... performs in a number of
pursuit-evasion contests.

9. Unlike ray tracing, ................... models the actual interaction between the lights and the
environment.
10. In photo realistic ................... environments, the need for quick feedback based on user
actions is crucial.
11. The goal of ................... facial animation is to synthesize realistic video sequences from
acoustic speech.

12. In case of ..................., each frame in the video sequence is morphed from the first frame.
13. ................... is a fantastic and dangerous place where up and down have no meaning, where
rivers of iridescent acid and high-energy laser mines are beautiful but deadly artifacts of
some other time.

14. ................... is a synthetic organism that can sense infrared radiation and tactile stimulus.
15. Automatic ................... is based on a robust lip image analysis.

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