Articulated Object Reconstruction and Markerless Motion Capture from Depth Video

Abstract

We present an algorithm for acquiring the 3D surface geometry and motion of a dynamic piecewise-rigid object using a single depth video camera. The algorithm identifies and tracks the rigid components in each frame, while accumulating the geometric information acquired over time, possibly from different viewpoints. The algorithm also reconstructs the dynamic skeleton of the object, thus can be used for markerless motion capture. The acquired model can then be animated to novel poses. We show the results of the algorithm applied to synthetic and real depth video.