Mocap Toolbox – a Matlab Toolbox for Computational Analysis of Movement Data

The MoCap Toolbox is a set of functions written in Matlab for analyzing and visualizing motion capture data. It is aimed at investigating music-related movement, but can be beneficial for other research areas as well. Since the toolbox code is available as open source, users can freely adapt the functions according to their needs. Users can also make use of the additional functionality that Matlab offers, such as other toolboxes, to further analyze the features extracted with the MoCap Toolbox within the same environment. This paper describes the structure of the toolbox and its data representations, and gives an introduction to the use of the toolbox for research and analysis purposes. The examples cover basic visualization and analysis approaches, such as general data handling, creating stick-figure images and animations, kinematic and kinetic analysis, and performing Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on movement data, from which a complexity-related movement feature is derived. 1. MOTIVATION AND OVERVIEW The MoCap Toolbox is a Matlab toolbox dedicated to the analysis and visualization of motion capture (MoCap) data. It has been developed for the analysis of musicrelated movement, but is potentially useful in other areas of studies as well. It is open source, distributed under GPL license, and freely available for download at: www.jyu.fi/music/coe/materials/mocaptoolbox. The MoCap Toolbox is mainly intended for working with recordings made with an infrared marker-based optical motion capture system. Such motion capture systems are based on an active source emitting pulses of infrared light at a very high frequency, which is reflected by small, usually spherical markers attached to the tracked object (e.g., a participant dancing or playing an instrument). With each camera capturing the position of the reflective markers in two-dimensional, a network of several cameras can be used to obtain position data in three