480 camera systems capture motion in space

Recently, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have proposed a technique to install a 480-camera system in a sphere dome machine that can monitor and capture the entire motion of objects inside. The technique promises to reconstruct complex movements, taking place on a large scale in practice and translating into digital information to serve a variety of needs in the near future.

Motion tracking technology has come a long way in development over the years and is often caught in cinematic effects. However, the disadvantages of previous motion tracking systems require users to wear complicated, hunchy devices. If you have a look at the secret school film program, you will see pictures of actors with costumes filled with small balls the size of a ping pong ball. This is the most commonly used motion capture system.

In order to overcome this disadvantage, scientists have found a way to capture movement accurately without having to be complicated and uncomfortable. And the solution proposed by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University is to use a camera system of 480 360-degree cameras to record motion in space . These are the cameras used to film scenes of "slowing down time" in the famous Matrix movie.

The key to this technique is to mount cameras across the surface of a dome called Panoptic Studio and head inward. Therefore, the camera system can capture all human movement or any object inside the dome. However, not all cameras are active during the time the system operates. Instead, the team used a software that could detect moving objects and calculate the optimal rotation angle. Based on that, the software will dictate which cameras will operate at the same time to capture the best motion.

Although research has only just entered the early stages, the initial results have opened up promising prospects. Researchers were able to record motion with more than 100,000 different coordinates in the video hundreds of frames with much higher accuracy than previous motion capture techniques. Maybe we have to wait for a while before the motion capture technology can go on mobile phones or small devices, but perhaps, Hollywood will apply this method in the near future.