Optotrak support in the FoBVis motion capture system
In the Laboratory for Motion Analysis of the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), scientists are studying human movement, for example the range of motion of the complete upper arm, especially in the presence of pathology or after treatment, for example surgical joint replacement. We are cooperating with the scientists there to bring the latest visualisation and interaction technology into their workflow.
During two recent bachelor final projects, students under our supervision have created a new software system, called FoBVis, that enables the acquisition and 3D visualisation of real-time motion capture data from a Flock-of-Birds electro-magnetic motion capture system. By attaching electro-magnetic transmitters to various key positions on a human subject, the motion patterns of that subject can be analysed in great detail. FoBVis was developed primarily in Python, a next-generation dynamic language that facilitates rapid application development, and makes use of the Visualization ToolKit, or VTK, a high-performance C++ visualisation library with good Python support. Below are two screenshots of the software, on the left the user interface during the initial sensor calibration, on the right a 3D real-time motion capture visualisation:
The Laboratory for Motion Analysis has recently acquired a state-of-the-art Optotrak Certus optical tracking system. Instead of electro-magnetic markers, this system uses passive optical reflectors and a calibrated stereo camera setup. This acquires the highly-accurate 3D positions and rotations of a large number of markers in real-time.
Although initially designed for the Flock-of-Birds acquisition setup, the FoBVis software has been designed with the integration of other devices in mind. In this project, your goal is to integrate support for the new Optotrak in the FoBVis system.
- Exploration of the supplied Optotrak programming API.
- Development of a simple Python wrapping layer for the Optotrak API.
- Integration of Optotrak support in FoBVis.
- Creation of a small demonstration of the new functionality.
Each of these milestones, when performed in sequence, is already useful, so we can be flexible with regard to project completion criteria.
At completion of this project, you will have acquired a number of valuable new skills. Perhaps even more importantly, playing with state-of-the-art real-time 3D motion capture equipment and 3D visualisation is loads of fun!
Please contact Dr. Charl Botha at c.p.botha@tudelft.nl or go to the website at http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Projects/FoBVisOptotrak if you would like any more information about this project.