Introducing the most economical 3D motion capture suit on the market

The creators of the Lord of the Rings character Gollum successfully developed a system capable of assimilating his movements based on the gestures of a real person wearing a suit fitted with sensors. And now, several years later, a similar system, Chordata, has been selected as the winning project at the UOC's 7th SpinUOC entrepreneurship event. What makes the Chordata project special, however, is the fact that it aims to make this system, known as motion capture or  mocap, accessible to the general public. As such, it has been conceived as an open source  system, so that anyone with some knowledge of programming can use or develop it for free. The cost of buying the accompanying sensor-fitted suit will also work out at half the price of any of the similar suits currently available on the market.

The idea, therefore, is to democratize this technology, which has a number of promising applications in areas such as robotics, visual arts, video games, health and sports sciences. For example, Joan Antoni Ventura, CEO of J. Ventura, a company which designs customized saddles for horses which are adapted to the rider, is looking to apply Chordata technology to the development of a saddle that can be specifically adapted to riders with disabilities (physical, mental or sensory) and the relevant horse. The scheme aims to use motion capture technology to study the movements of the horse and thus develop customized saddles that are precisely tailored to the needs of the rider. This project, which promotes social inclusion, is a joint enterprise being carried out in conjunction with Ventura's father, Jaume Ventura, and the Raúl Pinteño equestrian centre in Aiguablava, Girona.

Chordata can also be used to produce a 3D representation of the movements of patients suffering from motor problems following a stroke and thus monitor the progress of their recovery, whether in real or deferred time, either in the context of a medical consultation or in the home. Other applications of this technology include the analysis and acquisition of data on the movements of Olympic athletes or runners during training, which can then be used to develop very precise strategies in order to improve their performance.  In the video game field, gamers and virtual reality video game players can become their own avatars.

"We are looking at users with a limited budget who can modify the software if they wish to, adapting it to their own needs and sharing that knowledge. It is a collaborative model", explained Flavia Laurencich, a former UOC professional and one of the members of the team heading up the project.

The initiative has received requests in relation to purchasing the prototype from various countries around the world, including India, China, Mauritius, Brazil, the United States, France, Germany, Finland and Canada, among others. Much of the interest has come from university departments, independent film production companies, freelance video game developers and small companies working in rehabilitation.

An open source innovation

Chordata was, in fact, developed through open source and is the brainchild of Flavia's brother, programmer and digital artist Bruno Laurencich. Bruno's partner is a dancer and he wanted to capture his wife's movements in 3D for an artistic project. "He started looking into it and discovered that this technology was not available to buy, so he started doing some research and it took three years to create an initial prototype based on pre-existing open source software", the UOC professional explained.

It was then that Flavia and another colleague, communicator, audiovisual producer and current business director of the project, Juancho Casañas Ballester, came onboard. The trio have been working towards launching Chordata since 2017, along with new collaborators, such as programmer and multimedia artist Lorenzo Micozzi, who is another recent recruit to the team.

After being selected as finalists in a major international competition in August of last year, the Chordata development team saw the interest the project was generating around the world and decided to make up a dozen prototype suits in Bruno's workshop and test them out with some of the interested parties that had contacted them, with a further fifty on the waiting list.

Flavia and her colleagues have now selected the company they are going to use to manufacture their suits: "We were keen for it to be a European enterprise", she revealed. The roll-out of the product on the market is planned for 2020.

Fifteen sensors, adhesive strips and a microcomputer

Chordata's suit is designed to adapt to the needs of each user and, in fact, can be used for anything that moves, be it people, objects or animals.

Fifteen magnetic-inertial sensors are required to reproduce the movements of an entire human body, "the same sensors that let your mobile phone know when you incline or tilt it", Flavia pointed out .

These sensors, positioned on strategic points of the body using a simple system of adhesive strips, are connected by cables. The information captured is then transmitted to a microcomputer, which represents it as a predetermined three-dimensional model.

Funding and collaborators

Winning SpinUOC has meant a significant step forward for the Chordata enterprise, which, with the support of the UOC, will next year have the chance to attend the Mobile World Congress innovation platform, 4YFN. Similarly, the team behind the project are working to secure funding and actively trying to attract financial support from potential investors interested in the project – currently, through the OpenCollective platform and, in the future, with the launch of a crowdfunding campaign.

As a starting point to ensuring the sustainability of their project in the medium term, the Chordata team are planning to generate revenue from the sale of the basic suit, which they then plan to further develop in order to offer more complex versions of the system along with all kinds of customized motion capture services. "All, however, without ever turning it into a proprietary product or service", stressed Flavia.

Anyone interested in staying up to date with all the latest project developments can follow Flavia and her colleagues on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.