Glossary
Motion capture
Recording human or object movement as structured position data using markers, suits, or sensors. A core input for animation, robotics, and human-motion models.
Optical systems track reflective markers with synchronized camera arrays; inertial suits use body-worn IMUs; markerless capture estimates pose from plain video. The output is skeletal joint data at high frame rates — cleaner than anything recovered from video after the fact. Animation, robotics, and human-motion research use it as ground truth.
Why it matters
Mocap-grade data is the reference standard that video-derived pose gets judged against.