This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second Workshop on Human Motion, HumanMotion 2007, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 2007 in conjunction with ICCV 2007. The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on motion capture and pose estimation, body and limb tracking and segmentation and activity recognition.

This is the first book which informs about recent progress in biomechanics, computer vision and computer graphics – all in one volume. Researchers from these areas have contributed to this book to promote the establishment of human motion research as a multi-facetted discipline and to improve the exchange of ideas and concepts between these three areas. The book combines carefully written reviews with detailed reports on recent progress in research.

Motion capture is a technique for recording a performance and then translating it into mathematical terms. Animating motion is critical for the development of applications such as animation, virtual environments and video games. Character animation is the process by which natural movements are modelled and digitized so that digital character movements appear as natural as possible. There are three approaches to character animation: keyframe animation, motion capture, and simulation.

The Handbook of Human Motion is a large cross-disciplinary reference work which covers the many interlinked facets of the science and technology of human motion and its measurement. Individual chapters cover fundamental principles and technological developments, the state-of-the-art and consider applications across four broad and interconnected fields; medicine, sport, forensics and animation. The huge strides in technological advancement made over the past century make it possible to measure motion with unprecedented precision, but also lead to new challenges. This work introduces the many different approaches and systems used in motion capture, including IR and ultrasound, mechanical systems and video, plus some emerging techniques. The large variety of techniques used for the study of motion science in medicine can make analysis a complicated process, but extremely effective for the treatment of the patient when well utilised. The handbook descri bes how motion capture techniques are applied in medicine, and shows how the resulting analysis can help in diagnosis and treatment. A closely related field, sports science involves a combination of in-depth medical knowledge and detailed understanding of performance and training techniques, and motion capture can play an extremely important role in linking these disciplines. The handbook considers which technologies are most appropriate in specific circumstances, how they are applied and how this can help prevent injury and improve sporting performance. The application of motion capture in forensic science and security is reviewed, with chapters dedicated to specific areas including employment law, injury analysis, criminal activity and motion/facial recognition. And in the final area of application, the book describes how novel motion capture techniques have been designed specifically to aid the creation of increasingly realistic animation within films and v ideo games, with Lord of the Rings and Avatar just two examples. Chapters will provide an overview of the bespoke motion capture techniques developed for animation, how these have influenced advances in film and game design, and the links to behavioural studies, both in humans and in robotics. Comprising a cross-referenced compendium of different techniques and applications across a broad field, the Handbook of Human Motion provides the reader with a detailed reference and simultaneously a source of inspiration for future work. The book will be of use to students, researchers, engineers and others working in any field relevant to human motion capture.

"This book highlights the development of robust and effective vision-based motion understanding systems, addressing specific vision applications such as surveillance, sport event analysis, healthcare, video conferencing, and motion video indexing and retrieval"--Provided by publisher.

Make motion capture part of your graphics and effects arsenal. This introduction to motion capture principles and techniques delivers a working understanding of today's state-of-the-art systems and workflows without the arcane pseudocodes and equations. Learn about the alternative systems, how they have evolved, and how they are typically used, as well as tried-and-true workflows that you can put to work for optimal effect. Demo files and tutorials provided on the downloadable resources deliver first-hand experience with some of the core processes.

Computational Studies of Human Motion: Part 1, Tracking and Motion Synthesis reviews methods for kinematic tracking of the human body in video. The review confines itself to the earlier stages of motion, focusing on tracking and motion synthesis. There is an extensive discussion of open issues. The authors identify some puzzling phenomena associated with the choice of human motion representation --- joint angles vs. joint positions. The review concludes with a quick guide to resources and an extensive bibliography of over 400 references. Computational Studies of Human Motion: Part 1, Tracking and Motion Synthesis is an invaluable reference for those engaged in computational geometry, computer graphics, image processing, imaging in general, and robotic.