sim-mpc

This repository contains source code for the Model Predictive Control framework SimMPC, which can be used to simulate HCI movements using biomechanical models and the physics simulation MuJoCo. This framework is described in detail in the TOCHI submission Simulating Interaction Movements via Model Predictive Control. All simulation results used in this work are available in the SIM-MPC Dataset. The simulation uses the ISO-VR-Pointing Dataset. To obtain the maximum feasible torques used in the models, the CFAT method was used.

Paper

Simulating Interaction Movements via Model Predictive Control

Click here for a YouTube video

Cite

If you use our framework/toolbox in your work, please cite this paper as
Markus Klar, Florian Fischer, Arthur Fleig, Miroslav Bachinski, and Jörg Müller. 2023. Simulating Interaction Movements via Model Predictive Control. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 30, 3, Article 44 (June 2023), 50 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3577016

@article{10.1145/3577016,
author = {Klar, Markus and Fischer, Florian and Fleig, Arthur and Bachinski, Miroslav and M\"{u}ller, J\"{o}rg},
title = {Simulating Interaction Movements via Model Predictive Control},
year = {2023},
issue_date = {June 2023},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
volume = {30},
number = {3},
issn = {1073-0516},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3577016},
doi = {10.1145/3577016},
journal = {ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact.},
month = {jun},
articleno = {44},
numpages = {50},
keywords = {interaction techniques, optimal feedback control, maximum voluntary torques, Simulation, biomechanics, mid-air pointing, model predictive control, AR/VR environments}
}

Structure

This repository is divided in three folders:

• $\texttt{core}$ - contains the main code to simulate movements via MPC, optimize cost function parameters, and tools for visualization
• $\texttt{scripts}$ - contains different scripts to start simulations, compute initial activations using CFAT, and generate plots
• $\texttt{data}$ - contains the biomechanical models as MuJoCo .xml files, optimized cost function parameters, initial activations obtained via CFAT, and targets for a pointing task

Installation

To install sim-mpc as a package in a virtual environment, clone this repository, change the directory to the root directory and run

pip install -e .

Example

A minimal example simulation can be run simply by executing the file run_movement.py

python scripts/run_movement.py

Contributors

Markus Klar
Florian Fischer
Arthur Fleig
Miroslav Bachinski
Jörg Müller