My colleague Ragnhild Torvanger Solberg and I presented a paper at the Sound and Music Computing conference in Hamburg last week called: “Optical or Inertial? Evaluation of Two Motion Capture Systems for Studies of Dancing to Electronic Dance Music”.
This is a methodological paper, trying to summarize our experiences with using our Qualisys motion capture system for group dance studies. We have two other papers in the pipeline that describes the actual data from the experiments in question. The happy story in the SMC paper is that it is, indeed, possible to get good tracking with multiple people, although it requires quite some fine tuning of the system.
Download: Fulltext (PDF)
Abstract: What type of motion capture system is best suited for studying dancing to electronic dance music? The paper discusses positive and negative sides of using camera-based and sensor-based motion tracking systems for group studies of dancers. This is exemplified through experiments with a Qualisys infrared motion capture system being used alongside a set of small inertial trackers from Axivity and regular video recordings. The conclusion is that it is possible to fine-tune an infrared tracking system to work satisfactory for group studies of complex body motion in a “club-like” environment. For ecological studies in a real club setting, however, inertial tracking is the most scalable and flexible solution.
Presentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6v6M6eEqu8
Citation: Solberg, R. T., & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum, A. R. (2016). Optical or Inertial? Evaluation of Two Motion Capture Systems for Studies of Dancing to Electronic Dance Music. In Proceedings of the Sound and Music Computing Conference (pp. 469–474). Hamburg.
BibTeX @inproceedings{solberg_optical_2016, address = {Hamburg}, title = {Optical or {Inertial}? {Evaluation} of {Two} {Motion} {Capture} {Systems} for {Studies} of {Dancing} to {Electronic} {Dance} {Music}}, isbn = {978-3-00-053700-4}, abstract = {What type of motion capture system is best suited for studying dancing to electronic dance music? The paper discusses positive and negative sides of using camera-based and sensor-based motion tracking systems for group studies of dancers. This is exemplified through experiments with a Qualisys infrared motion capture system being used alongside a set of small inertial trackers from Axivity and regular video recordings. The conclusion is that it is possible to fine-tune an infrared tracking system to work satisfactory for group studies of complex body motion in a “club-like” environment. For ecological studies in a real club setting, however, inertial tracking is the most scalable and flexible solution.}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the {Sound} and {Music} {Computing} {Conference}}, author = {Solberg, Ragnhild Torvanger and Jensenius, Alexander Refsum, Alexander Refsum}, year = {2016}, pages = {469--474},