A Novel Tool for Motion Capture Database Factor Statistical Exploration

The recent arise of Motion Capture (MoCap) technologies provides new possibilities, but also new challenges in human motion analysis. Indeed, the analysis of a motion database is a complex task, due to the high dimensionality of motion data, and the number of independent factors that can affect movements. We addressed the first issue in some of our earlier work by developing MotionMachine, a framework helping to overcome the problem of motion data interpretation through feature extraction and interactive visualization [20]. In this paper, we address the question of the relations between movements and some of the various factors (social, psychological, physiological, etc.) that can influence them. To that end, we propose a tool for rapid factor analysis of a MoCap database. This tool allows statistical exploration of the effect of any factor of the database on motion features. As a use case of this work, we present the analysis of a database of improvised contemporary dance, showing the capabilities and interest of our tool.