Understanding visuo‐motor primitives for motion synthesis and analysis

Abstract

Abstract The problem addressed in this paper concerns the representation of human movement in terms of atomic visuo‐motor primitives considering both generation and perception of movement. We introduce the concept of kinetology, the phonology of human movement, and five principles on which such a system should be based: compactness, view‐invariance, reproducibility, selectivity, and reconstructivity. We propose visuo‐motor primitives and demonstrate their kinetological properties. Further evaluation is accomplished with experiments on compression and decompression. Our long‐term goal is to demonstrate that action has a space characterized by a visuo‐motor language. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.