MOTION GENERATION FOR ROBOTIC CHARACTERS

Number: 20250353177
Published: 2025-11-20
Filed: 2025-05-19
Assignee: DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC.
Inventors: Bächer; Moritz Niklaus et al.
CPC: B25J9/161; B25J9/163; B25J9/1664
Verdict: High Notable software
Source: Google Patents · FreePatentsOnline

The keeper's note

Motion-generation technique for robotic show characters (Bächer).

Abstract

A motion generation system includes a tracking model, executed by a processor, configured to track at least one kinematic reference motion of a robotic device; a reward surrogate model, executed by the processor, that evaluates a performance of the tracking model with respect to the at least one kinematic reference motion and estimates at least one reward for the tracking model based on the performance; and a generative model, executed by the processor, configured to generate a motion for the robotic device based on a contextual input and the estimated at least one reward, wherein the generative model is trained with a pre-training operation and a refinement operation separate from the pre-training operation.

Background

BACKGROUND

Recent advancements in generative motion models have achieved remarkable results, enabling the synthesis of lifelike human motions from textual descriptions. These kinematic approaches, while visually appealing, often produce motions that fail to adhere to physical constraints, resulting in artifacts that impede real-world deployment.

The automated generation of realistic motions based on high-level user input is a crucial task in physics-based character animation and robotics. Traditionally, computer animation has emphasized kinematic-based approaches, which are well-suited for animated film and video games where visual storytelling takes precedence. Recent advances in generative models have demonstrated the ability to synthesize diverse and visually appealing motions when trained on large datasets. However, these kinematic-based generated motions do not strictly satisfy the constraints that come with a physics-based environment. As a result, the motions often contain artifacts such as floating, foot sliding, self-collisions, violations of joint limits, and dynamic imbalance, making it challenging to deploy these models in the real world. Although robust motion tracking controllers and tracking models exist, the resulting motion is inherently limited by the quality of the provided target motion.

Current systems that generate motion for simulated and real robotic devices from an input prompt suffer from many deficiencies. For example, while sys

Claims

1. A motion generation system comprising: a tracking model, executed by a processor, configured to track at least one kinematic reference motion of a robotic device; a reward surrogate model, executed by the processor, configured to evaluate a performance of the tracking model with respect to at least one kinematic reference motion and estimate at least one reward for the tracking model based on the performance; and a generative model, executed by the processor, configured to generate a motion for the robotic device based on a contextual input and the estimated at least one reward, wherein the generative model is trained with a pre-training operation and a refinement operation separate from the pre-training operation. || 11. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, the computer-readable storage medium including instructions that when executed by a computer, cause the computer to: execute a tracking model configured to track at least one kinematic reference motion of a robotic device; execute a reward surrogate model that evaluates a performance of the tracking model with respect to the at least one kinematic reference motion and estimates at least one reward for the tracking model based on the performance; execute a generative model configured to generate a motion for the robotic device based on a contextual input and the estimated at least one reward, wherein the generative model is trained with a pre-training operation and a refinement operation separate from the pre-training operation.