Technology tracking and scanning using a conventional webcam

Face tracking

A solution that allows you to recognize a person's face and track the position of your lips, eyebrows, eyes in real time. SeeingMachines provides an API for third-party developers. Ray-Ban has posted a flash application on the website for quite some time, allowing them to try on glasses in real time.

Mocap

IPi software provides a set of tools for Motion Capture at home: using only 3 regular webcams (or two Kinekt cameras) without using any tags. Judging by the video, the skeleton is built quite reliably. We are expecting the opening of a new generation of Mocap budget studios and dance slot machines soon:
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Tracking flat objects

Now, any flat pattern (not just special tags) can be tracked in space with a webcam alone. Here you can download a library with an example.

3D scanning

Vi3DiM has developed an interesting 3D scanning technology for any objects using a single webcam.

Tracking complex surfaces

The Netherlands team The LAB has developed an interesting technology for tracking complex surfaces when shooting advertisements for WWF. The difficulty was to accurately recreate the 3D model of the body surface and its movement. The decision was the following:

• The model was marked on the body with reference points visible only in the infrared range;
• On all sides, the model was illuminated with IR illuminators.
• The video was filmed with a specially developed camera, more precisely with 2 cameras: one shot in the visible range, the other in the infrared range;
• The video from the second camera was processed with its own software and a grid was built that exactly matches the surface of the body and its movements;
• On the grid built animation.

The scheme of the special camera looks as follows

Leap

No comments.

And this is Leap, attached to the arm (MS development):

UPD. Kinect

A software and hardware solution from MS that allows you to track the skeleton and, more recently, the face of the user. It is actively used in commerce as an instrument of augmented reality.
Habrayuzer Lardite has written a number of good articles describing both the Kinekt hardware and the software (SDK).