DURIP Markerless Motion Capture for Shipboard, Outdoor, and Field Assessment of Sailor and Warfighter Physiological Performance
Abstract
Optimizing and enhancing human performance is crucial for the Navy to successfully executive its core mission of maintaining, training, and equipping combat-ready Naval forces capable of winning wars, deterring aggression, and maintaining freedom of the seas. Understanding and optimizing the physical performance of the Enlisted Sailors and Officers are fundamental to ensuring that the Navy can fulfill its plethora of duties, which can only be conducted effectively and efficiently using quantitative physical performance monitoring and assessment. Therefore, the acquisition of accurate, high fidelity, rich datasets of how Navy personnel perform functional tasks, especially in actual/realistic conditions versus simulated laboratory studies, will benefit the Navy in multiple facets, such as for: (1) mission success, (2) operational readiness, (3) injury prevention and health, (4) rehabilitation and recovery, and (5) force optimization and retention, among others. The acquisition of a state-of-the-art, markerless, optical motion capture system from Vicon that is custom designed to capture, in real-time, 3D human kinematic movements to enable quantitative physical performance monitoring and assessment in diverse settings. Markerless optical motion capture is an emerging technology used to record and analyze movements without the need for physical markers (typically retroreflective) or sensors attached to a subject#s body, which are required in traditional, marker-based, optical motion capture systems. This technology, relying on advanced algorithms and multiple camera systems, has found extensive application across various fields of study, including sports science, rehabilitation, and ergonomics. Customization of the Vicon markerless optical motion capture system was based on these four main objectives:a)Outdoor human performance research: A high-performance portable system that can be easily setup and used outdoors for capturing static and dynamic movements of human participants performing physically intensive tasks.b)Diverse environments: Capture human kinematic movement data reliably and accurately in diverse environments ranging from an urban environment to athletic field to ship compartment to lab space. c)Real-time assessment: Acquire and visualize data in real-time.d)Enhance existing capabilities: Integrate the proposed system with an existing, indoor, fixed, marker-based motion capture system to vastly improve testing capabilities.In summary, markerless opticalmotion capture automatically tracks all subjects in the camera#s field of view for analysis of any action in any environment. The configured system allows for markerless capture speeds up to 120 Hz (fps). The acquisition of the Vicon markerless optical motion capture system will enhance ongoing Office of Naval Research, Department of Defense, and other current and future funded projects at the University of California San Diego while enabling new research capabilities for human performance research.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Feb 24, 2025
- Source ID
- N000142512155
Entities
People
- Kenneth J. Loh
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of California, San Diego