A Study of the Noise-Level in Two Infrared Marker-Based Motion Capture Systems

With musical applications in mind, this paper reports on the level of noise observed in two commercial infrared marker-based motion capture systems: one high-end (Qualisys) and one affordable (OptiTrack). We have tested how various features (calibration volume, marker size, sampling frequency, etc.) influence the noise level of markers lying still, and fixed to subjects standing still. The conclusion is that the motion observed in humans standing still is usually considerably higher than the noise level of the systems. Dependent on the system and its calibration, however, the signal-to-noise-ratio may in some cases be problematic. Proceedings of the 9th Sound and Music Computing Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark, 11-14 July, 2012