Motion capture of swimmers has never been better. Combining our groundbreaking underwater cameras with a land-based system, over and underwater motion can be combined into a single motion capture.
A real challenge
Capturing a swimmer's motion underwater is not an easy task. When a swimmer jumps in, thousands of tiny bubbles create an explosion of reflective spheres – not unlike the markers meant to be tracked by the cameras.
Underwater Oqus cameras in a pool.
Not only that, the water surface acts like a mirror, reflecting so much light its brightness easily gets treated like a wall of giant markers. These two phenonema are the greatest obstacles we face, making underwater motion capture a real challenge.
Active filtering
A swimmer with a full body marker setup.
Luckily, Qualisys' cameras house state-of-the-art hardware making underwater motion capture easier than ever. By taking Qualisys' active filtering technology for outdoor motion capturing into the pool, underwater captures can be improved dramatically.
Active filtering is a hardware operation built into the Oqus cameras which greatly reduces unwanted reflections. By using it underwater, reflections from bubbles and other objects are effectivly minimised.
Combining under and over-water
By merging together data from a land-based and an underwater system, a combined motion capture can be made. This is useful when you are interested in tracking both the dive-in and the swimming part.
High-speed video
Just like our land-based Oqus cameras, the Oqus Underwater cameras can also be equipped with high-speed video, turning them into perfect underwater recording devices. Read more about our hardware.