Motion Capturing with Inertial Measurement Units and Kinect - Tracking of Limb Movement using Optical and Orientation Information

Christoph Kalkbrenner, Steffen Hacker, Maria-Elena Algorri, Ronald Blechschmidt-Trapp

2014

Abstract

This paper presents an approach for the tracking of limb movements using orientation information acquired from Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) and optical information from a Kinect sensor. A new algorithm that uses a Kalman filter to fuse the Kinect and IMU data is presented. By fusing optical and orientation information we are able to track the movement of limb joints precisely, and almost drift-free. First, the IMU data is processed using the gradient descent algorithm proposed in (Madgwick et al., 2011) which calculates the orientation information of the IMU using acceleration and velocity data. Measurements made with IMUs tend to drift over time, so in a second stage we compensate for the drift using absolute position information obtained from a Microsoft Kinect sensor. The fusion of sensor data also allows to compensate for faulty or missing measurements. We have carried out some initial experiments on arm tracking. The first results show that our technique for data fusion has the potential to be used to record common medical exercises for clinical movement analysis.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Kalkbrenner C., Hacker S., Algorri M. and Blechschmidt-Trapp R. (2014). Motion Capturing with Inertial Measurement Units and Kinect - Tracking of Limb Movement using Optical and Orientation Information . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices - Volume 1: BIODEVICES, (BIOSTEC 2014) ISBN 978-989-758-013-0, pages 120-126. DOI: 10.5220/0004787601200126

in Bibtex Style

@conference{biodevices14,
author={Christoph Kalkbrenner and Steffen Hacker and Maria-Elena Algorri and Ronald Blechschmidt-Trapp},
title={Motion Capturing with Inertial Measurement Units and Kinect - Tracking of Limb Movement using Optical and Orientation Information},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices - Volume 1: BIODEVICES, (BIOSTEC 2014)},
year={2014},
pages={120-126},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004787601200126},
isbn={978-989-758-013-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices - Volume 1: BIODEVICES, (BIOSTEC 2014)
TI - Motion Capturing with Inertial Measurement Units and Kinect - Tracking of Limb Movement using Optical and Orientation Information
SN - 978-989-758-013-0
AU - Kalkbrenner C.
AU - Hacker S.
AU - Algorri M.
AU - Blechschmidt-Trapp R.
PY - 2014
SP - 120
EP - 126
DO - 10.5220/0004787601200126