Human Body Kinematics and the Kinect Sensor

Abstract

For a good understanding of human body biomechanics scientist all over the world are using motion capture systems (MoCap). Such a system is mainly composed of one or multiple high performance cameras and a process unit for gathering key information. A low – cost solution for these systems is the Kinect sensor from Microsoft. The Kinect sensor is a depth camera that can be used for assessing full – body movements in terms of joint and/or segment positions and movement geometries. The resulting data can be used in the robotic industry, in clinical solutions, video gaming industries etc. The functionality of the equipment has been highly debated in many studies wherefrom result that the depth camera in question is accurate and reliable in studies such as human biomechanics. The aim of this paper is to explain the logics behind this equipment and its functionality. Therefore we present a new approach in constructing a 3D human skeleton model that can be used for assessing asymmetries by determining the human silhouette in 3D, the position of human body key points and joints, the angles between the track segments and full body kinematics.