Real-Time Motion Capture On A Budget

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory’s Simulation & Training Technology Center, along with Cole Engineering Services, Inc. and the University of Central Florida have set out to leverage commercial technology with the goal of improving realism, and reducing cost for Army training tasks. The focus of this task is to establish a prototype functionality that allows a live person to take control of a virtual character. This is done using the Enhanced Dynamic Geo-Social Environment, which is an Army-owned simulation built upon the Unreal Engine 4. Commercial games and movies make use of motion capture capabilities to animate characters. This functionality is needed in real-time to allow person-to-person interactions within a simulation. The goal is to have puppeteers that can take over Artificial Intelligence (AI) characters when in-depth interactions need to occur. While AAA games and movie budgets allow for more expensive systems, the goal of this team is to keep the cost well below $10,000. A market analysis along with this team’s experience utilizing and integrating the market capabilities to meet these goals are described in this paper