System Features

Exceptionally Wide Angle Operation Each Visualeyez™ system tracker can capture over a huge 190m³ space. This is due to its widest angle operation of all optical motion capture systems in the world (see Specifications). As a result, a 4-tracker system can be easily arranged to yield almost 6m x 6m full-body capture space.

Setup In Anyway You Like

Visualeyez™ systems do not require any strobers or ring-lights to sense the marker positions. The trackers can face each other without causing any blinding problem! Hence the system can be laid out and oriented in any way to capture the desired motions. For example, the chest motions can be captured even when a person is bending down by simply laying a tracker on the ground and pointing up at the chest area.

Intrinsic Marker ID Tracking

Each marker of a Visualeyez™ system is automatically assigned a distinct ID number during operation. The captured 3D data is automatically associated with this ID by the system. No data cleaning, no special marker arrangement, no special actor motions, nor any post-processing is ever required to help the system correctly identify a marker. Absolutely no marker swapping problem will ever occur!

Arbitrary Sampling Frequency

The marker sampling frequency of a Visualeyez™ system can be set to any value to suit an application. For tracking a slow motion the sampling rate can be set to be extremely low, for days or even weeks of continuous capture. Since there is no marker identification problem, high frequency sampling is not necessary except for tracking very high speed motions. For applications in which very high-speed and low-speed motions occur simultaneously, 'multi-rate sampling' (see below) can be applied to make the most effective use of the system capabilities.

Multi-Rate Sampling

Sampling slow motions at high frequency would result in large amount of useless data, wasting storage space and any data processing effort. Visualeyez™ system allows different markers to be sampled at different frequencies to capture motions of very different speeds at about the same spatial resolution. This is highly useful for many scientific applications. For example, the golf club head moves much faster than the golfer's body in a glof-swing motion. To capture at approximately the same spatial resolution, the clubhead markers can be captured four times faster than the body markers. (This is done in this example application.)

Zero Wrong Data Probability

Wrong data is worse than no data. An optical marker can be partially occluded and yield inaccurate position data as a result. The larger a marker is the more likely it can be partially occluded, and the larger the introduced inaccuracy will be. A Visualeyez™ system uses tiny LEDs as markers which are nearly impossible to occlude partially. Should partial occlusion ever occur, the introduced inaccuracy will still be very small. Hence there is practically zero probability of generating wrong data by a Visualeyez™ system.

Microsecond Sampling Precision

The marker position data captured by a Visualeyez™ system are sampled at microsecond precision. This is important for many scientific applications, especially those which require uniform precise motion feedback in real-time.

Fast & Reliable Real-Time Operation

Visualeyez™ system outputs the captured data after two sampling periods. For a VZ4000 tracker, this means the data can be output within 0.5 millisecond (< 0.0005s) from the time the marker light reaches the tracker. Since no marker identification problem will ever occur, the user can depend on receiving a correct marker's data within this timing for implementing real-time applications reliably.(This is done in this example application.)

Fully Automatic Calibration

By using the recently released VZAutoCal™, even a multi-tracker Visualeyez™ system is now fully automatically calibrated. No manual user calibration effort is required any more. Should any tracker gets bumped or moved during a capture, just wait for a second or two, and the system will recover the calibration by itself!

Continuous Adaptive Calibration

VZAutoCal™ will also update the system calibration continuously if the user so chooses. It will make use of the data captured during a session and optimize the system calibration at intervals chosen by the user. The updating can be stopped at any time by the user if desired.

Easy Operation

It's very easy to operate even a multi-tracker Visualeyez™ system for most motion capture applications:

Turn on the system.
Click on 'Auto Configure' (to connect the trackers to the computer)
Start 'Auto Detect Targets' (to find out which markers have been attached to the subjects)
Set desired sampling period or capture frame rate
Press 'Record' to start motion capture

Reliable High Accuracy Data

Every individual Visualeyez™ tracker is factory-calibrated byinstruments with 3D accuracies traceable to international standards. All data filters can be turned on or off. You can fully control the system and trust the data you get with absolute confidence.

Very High Resolution

Micrometer resolution enables a Visualeyez™ tracker to detect minute movements even at a distance. Closely spaced markers can be easily distinguished for capturing complex motions such as facial expressions, finger movements, or machine vibrations. Combining this with the wide-angle operation, large coarse motions and small intricate motions can be captured simultaneously, as in this example application.

Extendable Capture Distance

The nominal operating distance of a Visualeyez™ tracker is stated in the Specifications. By increasing the 'Extended Exposure' setting via the provided VZSoft™ GUI, the capture distance can be easily increased with some tradeoff to the maximum possible sampling frequency. This is very useful when long sensing distance is more important.

Highly Portable & Easy To Set Up

Lightweight yet rugged design makes a Visualeyez™ system the most portable motion capture system available. A 4-tracker system can be transported or carried on as baggages on flights by two people to anywhere, then set up and start to operate within about 30 minutes!

Two-Way Synchronization With Other Equipment

The capture process of a Visualeyez™ system can be started and stopped by an external equipment (or device) in several ways. The system can also generate signals for triggering other equipment to operate synchronously.

Digitization Capability

Visualeyez™ system further includes Accessories and software functions for digitizing the 3D shapes and sizes of complete objects for modeling or reverse-engineering applications. The same are also useful for defining the desired coordinate reference frame for the system.

Scalable To Meet Capture Requirement

The size of a Visualeyez™ system, hence the capture space and complexity, can be easily scaled up or down to fit a specific motion capture application. A single tracker can already capture the marker positions in 3D. Up to 24 trackers have been tested to operate together as a large multi-tracker system.