CONTINUOUSLY VARIABLE CONTROL OF ANIMATED ON-SCREEN CHARACTERS

A compact convenient hand-held, accelerometer-based computer control device is utilized to control on-screen animated characters presented by a comer-driven display in which the movement, persona, style, and voice of the character is controlled. The control device detects accelerations which are used to provide the on-screen character a particular persona, style or voice quality determined by the user. Character motion is determined by acceleration patterns based upon a learned language. The system requires only a series of easily learned hand movement patterns for corresponding character control. The style or emotional content of the movement is specified directly from gross accelerometer outputs without pattern matching. The outputs can also be used in connection with speech synthesis to provide voice quality attributes to audible information. The system has particular relevance to control of on-screen characters in interactive theater and virtual reality systems.