Motion Capturing is getting increasingly important for entertainment as well as research across a wide variety of applications. However, all of the available systems have serious disadvantages limiting their use for analyzing motion inside and around a narrow environment with vision obstructions and metal components. This is why ESA, PSA, and Renault have initiated the development of a new suit for motion capturing called ALERT (Assembly Line Ergonomics Registering Tool). The development is being conducted by the Belgium company Verhaert and tecmath, Germany. Highly important target applications are in the field of motion analysis for human motion modeling as well as workplace ergonomics including immersive VR techniques. The suit uses gyroscopes for measuring the orientation in space of each body segment. Special provisions are taken to control the common problem of gyroscope drift. A wireless data transmission guarantees for maximum freedom of movement of the test subjects. The orientation information is transferred to the RAMSIS human model for reproducing the real motion on the computer. In a first development step, a "mini suit" has been developed for measuring arm or leg movement. Based on this prototype solution, a thorough evaluation of the system was conducted focusing on important questions like accuracy, ease of use, speed and stability of the tracking algorithm for the human model. The results of the evaluation are discussed in detail and related to pros and cons of measurement systems based on other technology (optical targets, magnetic field, ultrasonic field).
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