Dr Michael Meredith

Michael Meredith

Dogsbody/Gopher

Contact Details

Telephone: (0114) 222 6111
email: m.meredith@sheffield.ac.uk

Qualifications

BEng, PhD, University of Sheffield

Biography

Dr Michael Meredith is a research associate based in the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield, UK. His early research focused on 3D computer character animation, virtual reality, mechanics and biomechanics, which resulted in a successful PhD thesis titled "Adapting and Reconfiguring Human Figure Motion Capture Data through the Application of Inverse Kinematics and Biomechanics-Based Optimisation". After this work he was given the opportunity to work on the e-Science project Virtual Vellum under the principle investigator Professor Peter Ainsworth of the French department at the university. This initiated a very fruitful inter-disciplinary relationship that has continued through into the Kiosque (DTI funded), Online Froissart (AHRC funded) and Pegasus (EPSRC funded) projects.

The latter research projects have centred on the Froissart chronicles, making the texts and digitised manuscript images more widely available. This has included developing software tools to interact with this content for both scholarly and general-public; this can be used either online over the web or locally on a standard desktop computer. The use of Grid technologies (access and data grids) have also been addressed and utilities in these software tools, including the most recent research project, Pegasus, that aims to deliver virtual exhibitions using such technologies.

The work developed by the Froissart team (content and software tools) was recently showcased during an exhibition at Leeds Royal Armouries, UK, called "The Chronicles of Froissart".

Administrative/Professional Responsibilities

  • Occasional finance duties (SOMLAL/HRI/CRF)
  • Occasional ICT duties (SOMLAL/HRI/CRF)
  • Appointed Person for HRI (kind of first aid thingy)
  • Member of the Research Computing Advisory Group
  • Reviewer for the Journal of Virtual Reality and Broadcasting (JVRB)
  • General dogsbody stuff

Publications

  • Martinez Lazalde, O., Maddock, S., Meredith, M., "A Constraint-Based approach to Visual Speech for a Mexican-Spanish Talking Head", International Journal of Computer Games Technology, Volume 2008, 2008
  • Martinez-Lazalde, O., Maddock, S., Meredith, M., "A Mexican-Spanish Talking Head", The Third International Conference on Games Research and Development 2007 (CyberGames 2007), pp. 17-24, 2007
  • Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Approximating Character Biomechanics with Real Time Weighted Inverse Kinematics", Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, Vol. 18, Issue 4-5, pp. 349-359, 2007
  • Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Inverse Skinning", CVMP 2006 (The 3rd European Conference on Visual Media Production), pp. 163-172
  • Meredith, M, "Adapting and Reconfiguring Human Figure Motion Capture Data through the Application of Inverse Kinematics and Biomechanics-Based Optimisation", PhD Thesis, The Department of Computer Science, The University of Sheffield, UK, March 2006
  • Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Adapting Motion Capture using weighted Real-Time Inverse Kinematics", ACM Computers in Entertainment, Volume 3(1), Jan/Mar, 2005
  • Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Individualised Character Motion Using Weighted Real-Time Inverse Kinematics", Proc. GAME-ON 2004, pp. 57-64 (Best paper of the conference)
  • Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Adapting Motion Capture using weighted Real-Time Inverse Kinematics", Proc. GDTW 2004 (The 2nd annual international workshop in Computer Game Design and Technology), pp. 120-129 (Best paper of the conference)
  • Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Using a half-Jacobian for real-time inverse kinematics", Proc. CGAIDE'04 (The 5th International Conference on Computer Games: Artificial Intelligence, Design and Education), pp. 81-88
  • Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Real-Time Inverse Kinematics: The Return of the Jacobian", Department of Computer Science Research Memorandum CS-04-06, University of Sheffield
  • Meredith, M. and Maddock, S., "Motion capture file formats explained", Department of Computer Science Technical Report CS-01-11, University of Sheffield
Research Projects

Downloads