Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Motion Capture Suit | ||
| A tight fitting garment that uses sensors at various positions to record movement in space; can be used as the basis for computer graphic creations. |
Yes, they have these in the real world, but what happens when they are cheap enough so anyone can play with them? Computers once cost millions of dollars each, but when they were cheap enough to put one on your desk at home, many other uses surfaced.
| The sharehouse was full of USC media sciences students, and they got on her nerves. ..Everyone who lived here was constantly taping everyone else, except Iain, and Iain wore a motion capture suit, even slept in it, and was recording every move he ever made. |
| Technovelgy from All Tomorrow's Parties,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1999 Additional resources -
|
Most of us collect something about ourselves, whether it is pictures of our families, bronzed baby shoes, or other objects. But collecting data about how your body moves in space - that's different. "Motion capture" is defined as the recording of body movement for later analysis. The information gathered can be as simple as a small set at points in space representing wrist, elbow, shoulder points, etc. Or, very complex structures like the changing expressions on a person's face, requiring hundreds of datapoints for a very small area, can be captured.
The earliest technology for this purpose, rotoscoping, was used to make Snow White, the Disney animated feature, more compelling. This technique utilized frame-by-frame film of live actors; animators then traced over the frames.
The first motion capture "suits" were electromechanical telefactoring devices; they lead to real-time control of puppets or allowed actors to script movements of computer graphics characters in the 1980's.
Optical tracking of the human body, using small markers at various points on the body, was also used at this time. The person was then filmed, and then the datapoints gathered from the film.
Take a look at a brief motion capture suit video to get a good look at how the motion of the suit translates into data usable in real time by a computer graphics program.
Don't miss this fascinating Flash application made from motion capture suit data. For more detailed information about the history of motion capture suits, be sure to see this very nice article A Brief History of Motion Capture for Computer Character Animation.
For a look at the first telefactoring device, see Waldo, from the Robert Heinlein story of the same name. Heinlein invented the term as well as the concept of telefactoring.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from All Tomorrow's Parties
More Ideas
and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to All Tomorrow's Parties
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Motion Capture Suit-related
news articles:
- Motion Capture Your Life Anywhere, Anytime
| MIT Headset Lets You Communicate Without Speaking |
| Tongue Mouse Created By Valve Engineer |
| Skinput Uses Your Skin As An Input Device |
| AcceleGlove Open-Source Data Glove |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
