Elite: A Digital Dedicated Hardware System for Movement Analysis Via Real-Time TV Signal Processing

The system illustrated in this paper has been designed and developed particularly for automatic and reliable analysis of body movement in various conditions and environments. It is based on real-time processing of the TV images to recognize multiple passive markers and compute their coordinates. This performance is achieved by using a special algorithm allowing the recognition of markers only if their shape matches a predetermined "mask." The main feature of the system is a two-level processing architecture, the first of which includes a dedicated peripheral fast processor for shape recognition (FPSR), designed and implemented by using fast VLSI chips. The second level consists of a general purpose computer and provides the overall system with high flexibility. The main characteristics are: no restriction on the number of markers, resolution of one part in 2500, and a 50 Hz sampling rate independent of the number of markers detected. The prototype has been fully developed, and preliminary results obtained from the analysis of several movements are illustrated.