PIKA (Procedural Inverse Kinematic Animation)

by David Herring

Overview

Want to bring a four-legged robot to life but don't know how to animate? Enter PIKA. Using Inverse Kinematics and height maps, PIKA solves this by procedurally determining leg positions and animating them along Catmull-Rom splines. By introducing additional rules—such as only one leg on each side being allowed to lift at a time—a realistic movement system comes to life.

Key Features

Leg Placement

Real‑time IK solves joint angles for naturally positioned legs.

Terrain Adaptation

Using Heightmap functions, legs are able to adjust on uneven surfaces.

Animation

Catmull-Rom splines + IK Solving creates smooth and natural transitions between leg positions

Technologies Used

IK Solver (BFGS Optimization)
Perlin Noise (Terrain Generation)
Finite State Machine
GLM & Eigen (Math & Linear Algebra)