Using 3D to understand human motion

The understanding and tracking of human motion has been a subject of interest in the scientific community for more than one century. The long history of human motion analysis comes from the large scope of applications of such measurement that can be found in medicine, biomechanics, sport, ergonomics, and even civil engineering. More recently, those technologies have also been widely exploited for the development of animation movies and games. Needless to say, the techniques used one century ago significantly differ from those used today. This paper describes in a first part the evolution of the technological capabilities for motion analysis and the actual limitations. From this analysis and in a second part, we describe the experience related to the creation of a motion analysis laboratory at the University of Liege and show how such a platform could be the center of a multidisciplinary research and provide valuable information to various communities. Keywordsbiomechanics; motion capture; sport gesture