Danish electronics company Rokoko is completing a successful campaign for Salto, their motion capture suit.
The team at Rokoko Electronics had a vision when they were students in film school. They wanted to create live animated theatre. Access to motion capture technology was difficult to find and extremely expensive. They developed a low cost motion capture suit named Salto, and are currently finishing a successful Kickstarter funding campaign to fund production.
Salto was developed with the goals of being easy to use, mobile and affordable to everyone. The system is built as a wearable suit, ready to use as soon as the user puts it on. Nineteen sensors and one hub are built into the suit, and optional gloves contain seven additional sensors for hand movements. Sensors contain a 9-axis gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetometer. Each sensor has a microcontroller that calibrates movement and processes data, at a speed of up to 100 frames per second. Men and women are both offered three size choices for the suit.
The community around Salto is already in place and waiting for units to be delivered, and the estimated first ship date is April 2016. A Software Development Kit is compatible with C++, Java, Python, Unity, Unreal Engine, Maya, Oculus and Motionbuilder. Between the comments on the campaign page and a recent AMA at reddit Rokoko is being asked tough questions by a very engaged userbase. They’re upfront about the problem of drift and the fact that the suit might not hold up under stuntman levels of use and exertion.
Rokoko is also working with the University of Southern Denmark on Plai (Psychiatric Live Animotion Intervention), attempting to create a tool to treat children on the autism spectrum. Salto is an awesome project and I would love to see it succeed. Medical and biophysics applications could benefit from motion capture technology just as easy as video games and the entertainment industry.