In a modern society where metrics are critical to businesses, motion capture has the potential to revolutionize several industries. Any industry that has repetitive motions can now measure exactly how productive their workforce is by wireless motion capture sensors. This is only the beginning of the impact that motion capture is having on the business marketplace. Motion capture is having an impact on several industries such as: plant work, monitoring automated processes, games, movies, rehabilitation (and related fields), and robotics. It is a rare feat when a single innovation manages to span so many different fields. In a short period of time it has opened up new markets, expanded current ones and improved the quality of work in others. The impact of Motion Capture Technology on the business world has been far reaching. The most mainstream impacts that have been recognized are the major changes to the entertainment industry, primarily in the gaming and movies sectors. The gaming industry has made a push towards using motion capture technology for a large percentage of its games and interfaces. The first major iteration in modern gaming motion capture technology was the Nintendo Wii. The Wii immediately had far reaching implications with its popularity and selling power among non-traditional markets. In its release it grabbed Nintendo a higher percentage of the traditional gaming market share as well as expanded the market to several groups of new customers. This expansion caused an immediate shift in the market prompting the other major players to respond with their own equivalent motion capture gaming device, in the Playstation Move and Xbox Kinect. Neither of these devices enjoyed the same level of success as the Wii, which had already cemented itself as the go to device for motion gaming with sales numbers breaking 100 million units (Examiner). The Wii opened the door to new markets of casual gamers, and in turn caused the industry to reinvent how they approach the idea of casual gaming. While the immediate impact of mainstream motion capture in the gaming industry is evident, the impact on the film industry is a little more subtle. Motion capture did not change everything for CGI (computer generated images) and animated films, but it improved the quality significantly. In iterations of CGI scenes prior to using motion capture the images rarely looked realistic; the animations were almost impossible to get to move and act as people do. It wasn’t exactly difficult to determine when the Blade series transitioned from actors to CGI scenes, but when you watch newer movies (such as Avatar) that are either fully animated or supplemented by animated scenes it is often difficult to discern what is live action and what is animated. This improvement can not entirely be credited to motion capture, as all of the technology surrounding the animation industry has come a long ways, but it can be credited with giving the animations realistic movement patterns. Although the entertainment applications of motion technology are probably the most fun, there are several other more practical applications of motion technology in industry. One of these applications is in the biomechanics and rehabilitation fields. With the technology becoming far more advanced and multiple points of measurement becoming easier, the applications for performing gait analysis(Wikipedia) much more accurately for the purpose of improving sports performance or shortening rehabilitation time from injury(Vicon). Shifting to industry provides some insight into the capability of tracking performance for repetitive work as it can track exactly how many times an activity is performed through sensors strapped to the individual. This allows for a much better metric for determining wastage and can be analyzed to find inefficiencies in a process as well as underperforming individuals (Xsens). Xsens also shows the ability for use with life safety.
