Human motion capture driven by orientation measurements

Motion-capture techniques are rarely based on orientation measurements for two main reasons: (1) optical motion-capture systems are designed for track ing object position rather than their orientation (which can be deduced fro m several trackers), (2) known animation techniques, like inverse kinematic s or geometric algorithms, require position targets constantly, but orienta tion inputs only occasionally. We propose a complete human motion-capture t echnique based essentially on orientation measurements. The position measur ement is used only for recovering the global position of the performer. Thi s method allows fast tracking of human gestures for interactive application s as well as high rate recording. Several motion-capture optimizations, inc luding the multijoint technique, improve the posture realism. This work is well suited for magnetic-based systems that rely more on orientation regist ration (in our environment) than position measurements that necessitate dif ficult system calibration.