Saturday, May 09, 2009

Second Skin: Low Cost Motion Tracking of the Body

An Image of photo-sensors embedded into a fabric sleeve and a visualization of the tracking information generated bye the Second Skin system.
Photo from the Technology Review, found here.

Besides falling below the one thousand dollar mark Second Skin is notable for using a novel method of projected light and photo-sensors in conjunction with a vibration base bio feed back element. The idea being that this device is designed not only to the sense the body of the performer in space, but also effect a form of control over their performers body. There are a number of interesting comments in the Slashdot article where I first found the article linked above and this video which demonstrates the Second Skin technology, both hosted by the MIT Technology Review.

You can find the home page for the Second Skin project here: http://cameraculture.media.mit.edu/secondskin

The two main folks behind Second Skin are Chris Bregler and Ramish Raskar.