Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories has developed Prakash: Lighting-Aware Motion Capture for Dynamic Virtual Sets, which is a very small motion capture system comprised of a single device and camera that can be embedded in clothing.

Sibert perhaps saved the best for last, which is the Prakash: Lighting-Aware Motion Capture for Dynamic Virtual Sets developed by Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories. "This is a very nice motion capture system," Sibert affirms. "It's very small and can be embedded in clothing and things like that. It's a motion capture that you can do with a single device and a camera. The single tracking device is relatively unaffected by ambient lighting. So, you can do it in bright daylight, which is a hard thing to do. You can do it in really dark situations. So, if you were going to do live-action motion capture with a character, you could have the character in the studio in front of a greenscreen, and you can do the motion capture on the actual set. And it can be an outdoor set. It can be a location. Then you would have the motion capture in the environment in which you are going to animate your subject into. So, you would no longer need to do (the motion capture) in a studio where you have mocked up the kind of environment you might have. For example, if you were doing it on a hillside or the edge of a cliff, you could actually capture the motion on site."

The system uses tracking tags that are imperceptible under attire, and inserted computer graphics elements can match the lighting on the presenter, making the technique ideal for realtime broadcast. Current motion capture technology requires hours of data post-processing, high-speed cameras or special lighting and work areas dedicated to esoteric systems. This system, on the other hand, foregoes these expensive parts, so it is much less expensive. Motion capture no longer requires specially designated spaces, special lighting and huge investments.

Aside from entertainment, other areas that would benefit from accessible motion-capture include rehabilitation clinics and independent biomedical researchers in fields, such as physics, anthropology and sociology. Veterinary clinics could use accessible motion-tracking systems to examine animal gaits and behaviors for diagnosis.

So, there you have it -- a preview of Emerging Technologies at SIGGRAPH, 2007. And there's a lot more than space permits me to mention here. So, come see for yourself. The Emerging Technologies will be on display from Aug. 5-9, Ballroom 20 A-D at the San Diego Convention Center.

J. Paul Peszko is a freelance writer and screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He writes various features and reviews as well as short fiction. He has a feature comedy in development and has just completed his second novel. When he isn't writing, he teaches communications courses.