MARKERLESS TRACKING IN MOTION CAPTURE
What is it and Why it is important? In simplest terms, “markerless tracking” is the ability to track the movement of human beings without instrumentation attached to the body. Most traditional tracking technologies involve attaching reflective markers or 6DOF sensors (Inertial Measurement Units or electro magnetic sensors) to body segments to determine the position and orientation of the segment. Markerless tracking would extract that information with less invasive methods using digital video. Instrumenting subjects is a problem on many levels. Elite athletes are particularly sensitive to unusual stuff hanging on their bodies and researchers have more generally worried that instrumentation affects the subject’s natural movement of the activity they are studying. The process of instrumenting subjects is time consuming. And instrumentation generally confines a study to laboratory settings. Accurate, realtime, markerless tracking is the holy grail of motion capture! A
