GRADES 9-12
MOTION CAPTURE AND ANALYSIS

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Motion Caption (continued) While these systems do an excellent job at motion capture and analysis, they are invasive methods of motion capture. Clearly tennis equipment and players could not be tagged with these devices during a professional tournament. Subsequently, some researchers use video or film cameras to record motions. Your standard home video camera collects 30 frames/second. Researchers will often use high speed cameras at 250 or 500 frames/second (sometimes even higher). Motion capture and analysis has been a tool used by the military, universities, and research groups from industry (groups of people that conduct scientific studies to develop new products or techniques). The military used motion capture and analysis to study ballistics (the flight of objects that are not self-propelled, for example bullets). These objects have a shelf-life (a length of time that an object can be kept without deteriorating). Researchers wanted to understand if projectiles built today would still fly the same way several years from now. They would use high speed cameras to study the performance of these objects over a period of time and look for differences. Researchers and students at universities used motion capture and analysis to study both biomechanics (the science of how a living organism moves) and fluid (liquid or gas) flow. One very interesting project was funded by the Navy and conducted at a university. The Navy and other branches of the Department of Defense are interested in unmanned vehicles. The researchers used cameras under the water to study how sea creatures maneuver on the ocean floor. How does a crab move over the edge of a cliff? By understanding how these creatures move over this difficult terrain, better underwater droids (robots) can be constructed.