Designing a unified framework for simulating a broad variety of human behaviors has proven to be challenging. In this article, we present an approach for control system design that can generate animations of a diverse set of behaviors including walking, running, and a variety of gymnastic behaviors. We achieve this generalization with a balancing strategy that relies on a new form of inverted pendulum model (IPM), which we call the momentum-mapped IPM (MMIPM). We analyze reference motion capture data in a pre-processing step to extract the motion of the MMIPM. To compute a new motion, the controller plans a desired motion, frame by frame, based on the current pendulum state and a predicted pendulum trajectory. By tracking this time-varying trajectory, the controller creates a character that dynamically balances, changes speed, makes turns, jumps, and performs gymnastic maneuvers.

The use of halogen-based materials has been regulated since toxic substances are released during combustion. In this study, polyurethane foam was coated with cationic starch (CS) and montmorillonite (MMT) nano-clay using a spray-assisted layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly to develop an eco-friendly, high-performance flame-retardant coating agent. The thickness of the CS/MMT coating layer was confirmed to have increased uniformly as the layers were stacked. Likewise, a cone calorimetry test confirmed that the heat release rate and total heat release of the coated foam decreased by about 1/2, and a flame test showed improved fire retardancy based on the analysis of combustion speed, flame size, and residues of the LbL-coated foam. More importantly, an additional cone calorimeter test was performed after conducting more than 1000 compressions to assess the durability of the flame-retardant coating layer when applied in real life, confirming the durability of the LbL coating by the lasting flame retardancy.