Patent ID: 7403880

Claim:
A method of moving a virtual articulated object in a virtual environment in a succession of unit movements, the articulated object comprising a set of articulated elements connected together by a set of joints, the relative positions of the articulated elements being defined by a plurality of joint angles about a plurality of degrees of freedom, the method comprising the following steps: calculating an interaction distance between a given articulated element and the other articulated elements of the articulated object; extracting from said interaction distance, a first point belonging to the given articulated element, and a second point belonging to one of the other articulated elements of the articulated object; defining a single extraction vector from said first and second points; and moving the given articulated element away from the other articulated elements of the articulated object in a movement defined as a function of the single extraction vector by acting on the degrees of freedom of the articulated object in order to avoid a collision between the given articulated element and the other elements of the articulated object, wherein said steps of calculating an interaction distance, extracting the first and second points, defining the extraction vector, and moving away the given articulated element, are repeated for each of the articulated elements of the articulated object in order to avoid collision between each articulated element and the remainder of the articulated object.