Rethinking shortest path: an energy expenditure approach

Considering that humans acting in constrained environments do not always plan according to shortest path criteria; rather, they conceptually measure the path which minimises the amount of expended energy. Hence, virtual characters should be able to execute their paths according to planning methods based not on path length but on the minimisation of actual expended energy. Thus, in this paper, we introduce a simple method that uses a formula for computing vanadium dioxide (VO2) levels, which is a proxy for the energy expended by humans during various activities.