The team over at Actor Machine [1] developed a very interesting approach to deal with animation.
They basically created a system to control biped animation like emotional emphasized movement to drive characters in realtime. It seems to be like a motion capture system but with the motion being not captured but procedurally generated. The target market for this technology seems to be realtime media like games.
This project is led by Ken Perlin creator of the Perlin Noise function.

[1] Actor Machine(actormachine.com)

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