"Firefly capturing method": Motion capturing by monocular camera with large spherical aberration of lens and Hough-transform-based image processing

We demonstrate a new motion capturing method that uses the monocular camera with large spherical aberration of lens to measure 3D positions of point light sources attached on an object in real time without any sequential lighting. Point light sources are transformed into circle patterns by the large spherical aberration of lens mounted in the camera. The diameter and center position of circle pattern give the distance and direction to the light source, resulting in measuring its 3D position. Circle patterns are extracted by video image processing based on Hough transform even if they are overlapped each other. We tracked the circle patterns by predicting their next positions by Kalman filter that includes the acceleration of movement. By combining these processing techniques we succeeded in demonstrating the motion capturing of several LEDs in real time, which is shown in 3D graphics