Simulation of Fatigue Levels of Virtual Human Characters According to Different Climatic Conditions

Abstract

Simulations play an important role when it comes to training in any field of study. It could be varying from sports to medicine to construction to even military training. This thesis is focused on simulating of fatigue and energy, based on different climatic conditions and how virtual humans would react to it. This would be important especially when it comes to the planning and preparation. This research tries to find a solution where simulation engines do take into account changes in climatic and environmental conditions like temperature, wind speed and wind direction as well as the slope of the terrain when calculating the fatigue of the virtual characters in it so that it would add to the realism of the simulation. The simulation engine used for the area of study is VBS and through this engine an external application will be used to set the parameters such as temperature, wind speed and wind direction as well as the slope of the terrain. Thereafter, a virtual character will run for 500m while changing these parameters each time. To validate the results obtained for the different environment conditions the T-Test was carried out for all results against the control of baseline environment factors being considered. By analyzing the results obtained it was concluded that rise in temperature (P-Value = 0.00001), running against the wind (P-Value = 0.00001) and running against the slope of the terrain (P-Value = 0.00001) contributed to increased fatigue levels. Analysis considering changing of temperature, changing of wind speed and changing of terrain slope in a combined instance to simulate realistic behavior also revealed increased fatigue levels in virtual humans. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that when the virtual human was running with the wind (P-value = 0.414449) and when running down the slope of the terrain (P-value = 0.197622) there was no significant impact to the fatigue levels. It can be concluded that this system is able to add value in planning and preparation by simulating fatigue levels of characters when environmental factors such as temperature, fatigue when running against the wind and simulation of fatigue when running up a slope of the terrain.