Kinematic Motion Analysis with Volumetric Motion Capture

Kinematic motion analysis is widely used in health-care, sports medicine, robotics, biomechanics, sports science, etc. Motion capture systems are essential for motion analysis. There are three types of motion capture systems: marker-based capture, vision-based capture, and volumetric capture. Marker-based motion capture systems can achieve fairly accurate results but attaching markers to a body is inconvenient and time-consuming. Vision-based, marker-less motion capture systems are more desirable because of their non-intrusiveness and flexibility. Volumetric capture is a newer and more advanced marker-less motion capture system that can reconstruct realistic, full-body, animated 3D character models. But volumetric capture has rarely been used for motion analysis because volumetric motion data presents new challenges. We propose a new method for conducting kinematic motion analysis using volumetric capture data. This method consists of a three-stage pipeline. First, the motion is captured by a volumetric capture system. Then the volumetric capture data is processed using the Iterative Closest Points (ICP) algorithm to generate virtual markers that track the motion. Third, the motion tracking data is imported into the biomechanical analysis tool OpenSim for kinematic motion analysis. Our motion analysis method enables users to apply numerical motion analysis to the skeleton model in OpenSim while also studying the full-body, animated 3D model from different angles. It has the potential to provide more detailed and in-depth motion analysis for areas such as healthcare, sports science, and biomechanics.