Difference: OptimizingWalking (15 vs. 16)

(a) Contribution: This paper builds on the SIMBICON approach by introducing a semi-automatic way to optimize for parameters that yield a more "natural" looking gait. They also come up with their own objective function and justify/analyze the influence of every term.

(b)Evaluation: Most evaluation is "looking whether it looks natural". They do evaluate the influence of each term in the objective function, but they never once use any kind of numerical data. At least they do compare against motion reconstructed from motion capture data.

(c) They provide code, explicit formulas, and numerical values for their parameters. It seems reproducible enough at first glance, but a fair amount of knowledge of how SIMBICON works may be required.

(d) I think some numerical data might be helpful in tuning their own objective function (not only the parameters, but the actual terms). The point is not to use motion capture data, but they could still do so in order to obtain a better function (and then not use it at runtime) which would be more robust and perhaps simpler.

-- Main.ginestra - 25 Nov 2011