I have no strings to hold me down

An update on some of my latest research and work: This video shows what I see inside my head-mounted display. The room has cameras that track the lights on my outfit (yes, I am, in fact, wearing spandex covered in lights; it's becoming trendy here in Texas). My software recognizes a few gestures that let me interact with a simulated environment.

Some of you may remember that a quite a while ago, I was working on a project to teach a simulated person to balance. That project did not work out super well. There are just too many variables involved if you try to account for every joint that can possibly move. Moving your left wrist does not help you balance much; so you can safely ignore it and focus more on your legs and torso. Unfortunately, the simulation does not have any way of knowing which joints are important without exploring all of them and all their combinations, but even the simplest jointed creature is too complex to thoroughly explore all combinations of movements and actions.

So... how did Emily learn to balance and walk? I wish I knew. I do know, however, that she had examples to follow and we helped her balance at first. So I've tried to make it so that I can enter the same world as my blockman and help him balance and walk. No learning is going on right now; the blockman is a perfectly floppy rag-doll. The ability to interact with it is in place and it's pretty fun, but now comes the hard part.