Motion Capture at Aberystwyth

The Department of Computer Science successfully bid to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) for a motion capture system. The system is to be used in research areas of Bioengineering, Robot Control and Computer Vision, led by Dr Horst Holstein, Dr David Barnes, Dr Yonghuai Liu and Dr Fred Labrosse. The equipment gives a unique research opportunity to the department

The equipment is located in the Intelligent Systems Laboratory of the Computer Science Department at UWA (soon to be refurbished), although it can be set up elsewhere. It is a professional marker-based optical motion capture system manufactured by the British company VICON Motion Systems. The complete VICON 512 system, with seven state-of-the-art M cameras, is valued at £150,000. During motion capture, the cameras illuminate retro-reflective markers fixed to the moving subject. Being sensitive to infra-red light, the cameras can scan their CCD retinas for the images of the reflective markers, other image features being thresholded out. This enormous simplification in image registration allows two-dimensional camera image positions of markers to be digitally recorded in real time. Vision fusion of the different camera data sets allows three-dimensional coordinates for the marker positions to be obtained in a rapid offline process. The result is a frame by frame record of the 3D coordinates of each of the markers. Capture rates are typically set between 60 and 240 frames per second.

Vision, a fundamental human function, is an inherent challenge for computing. In the Intelligent Systems Laboratory, we are addressing motion recognition and motion analysis. Our subjects include humans, robots and dirigible balloons. Medical collaboration for use of the VICON system in monitoring degenerative human motor control is currently being sought. The VICON system is also being used as an independent measurement system for calibrating the Bealge2 robot arm. Beagle2 is a British led project, part of the ESA Mars Express Mission, with a launch date in June 2003 (www.beagle2.com). The VICON System has a potentially major role in joint research with the Department of Sports Science at UWA, in close collaboration with its new head of department, Professor Jo Doust.

The VICON Motion Capture System is a sophisticated research tool that will be in much demand at UWA. It will also serve as a focus for innovative student investigations.