Puppy Motion Capture Project

Creative Director and Principal Investigator
Veterinarian School, Blacksburg, Virginia, 2014
Funded by an Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) SEAD (Science, Engineering, Art, and Design) Grant
~Awarded tenure in spring, 2016

I created this ongoing puppy motion capture project to employ safe, noninvasive motion capture and 3D visualization tools to study canine puppy socialization behaviors with a newly developed portable motion capture unit. We used an array of synchronized structured light sensors to capture a collection of moving objects, which is a feasible technique for recording and quantifying puppy social interactions. This technique for capturing depth is faster than a laser scanner because it covers the entire field every frame and is more suited for moving objects. Several of these sensors can be combined together to provide a more complete image of a 3D scene of objects. With the array of sensors calibrated to the same environment, their depths can be combined to produce an aggregate point cloud. The point cloud scene can be segmented to uniquely identify and track separate objects. These data can be used in future studies with the use of machine learning algorithms to computationally identify social behaviors.

My role as Creative Director and Principal Investigator on the project was to work on discovering new ways of capturing complex movements with off-the-shelf technology in different modes of use. I created new software to capture movements of several dogs at once and to replicate them in 3D movements. My role took on resolving all the complex issues and collaborating with several schools and other institutions to help pioneer a new pipeline to capture form using simple depth map cameras. The point cloud data from the captured research sessions was used to animate the 3D models from the CT puppy scans.

Collaborators: Bess J. Pierce (Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech), Jeryl C. Jones (Division of Animal and Nutritional Sciences, Davis College at West Virginia University) and Matthew Swarts (Digital Building Lab, SimTigrate Design Lab at Georgia Tech)