Markerless motion capture and sports biomechanics.
CalTennis is the first large-scale sports benchmark for monocular-to-3D pose estimation: 40 players, 11M+ synchronized frames. The finding is a dissociation — relative joint angles pass, but depth and foot contact fail systematically, exactly where injury risk lives.
Four 2026 papers ask whether one phone camera can replace force plates, MoCap suits and EMG: OpenCap Monocular, BioHuman, From Pixels to Newtons, and Pose-to-Biomechanics — plus why upstream pose accuracy is the ceiling on all of them.
Three 2026 papers on getting biomechanics out of the lab: Ultra Diffusion Poser (full-body pose from IMUs + UWB, zero cameras), biomechanics-aware markerless hand capture, and a wearable study auditing the VR reality gap — plus the open question each one leaves behind.
Does single-leg jump strength predict soccer kick speed? In 6 amateur players, the dominant leg kicked harder (99 vs 85 km/h) — but the real surprise was that a stronger non-dominant support leg went with a faster dominant-leg kick.
Apple’s ARKit turns an iPhone into a markerless 3D motion tracker — but how accurate is it? I tested it across 10 exercises with 11 participants. Single joints at peak flexion were within ~3°, but errors near full extension and the floor reached up to 63°.
Can a smartphone app really measure how you move? Five motion-capture apps — ViMAS, KinesioCapture, Coach’s Eye, LGait, and SmartGait — have been validated against VICON and 3D systems. Here’s the accuracy each study actually found, app by app.
Can your phone measure how you move accurately enough to fix your form? Here’s why Apple’s ARKit — 3D motion capture from ordinary 2D video, auto-calibrated and real-time — is a promising answer, and how it compares with VICON, 2D video, and Kinect.
Three ways to capture 3D movement without markers — single-camera AI depth, a depth sensor, or multiple cameras. Here’s how they compare on accuracy, cost, and setup, and how to choose.
We benchmarked pose estimation accuracy across six models — MediaPipe, MeTRAbs, YOLO and MoveNet — against the VICON gold standard. Two clear tiers emerged; here’s which to use, and when.
Can markerless pose estimation replace marker-based motion capture in sports? Our validation study found a ~10-degree mean joint-angle difference — invisible to the eye, but too much for clinical precision. Here’s what that means.