A mobile low-cost motion capture system based on accelerometers

Low-cost accelerometers can be employed to create a motion-capture solution for below US$ 100. It may be used in mobile settings employing a portable digital recording device to capture the analog data of 15 degrees of freedom. The solution is integrated with standard 3D animation software. We introduce methods to extract and tweak kinematical as well as timing data from these acceleration sensors, which are attached to an actor's limbs. These methods take care of the fact that the measured acceleration data alone can neither provide complete nor accurate information to satisfactorily reconstruct the captured motion. Particular emphasis is placed on the ease of use, in particular concerning the calibration of the system.