Feasibility of Bluetooth Low Energy for motion capturing with Inertial Measurement Units

Abstract

Wireless Inertial Measurement Units provide motion capture data with a low hardware cost while offering a lot of mobility for the user. The current solutions rely on Wi-Fi or custom radio protocols, which are usually access point-centre having all the traffic routed through a single access point, limiting direct interaction capabilities with the surrounding devices. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) forms point-to-point networks directly between two devices without additional networking, thus, a BLE based motion capture suit could enable seamless direct cooperation between two robots or a human and a robot. In this paper, the feasibility of BLE 5 for motion capturing is investigated by designing and testing an implementation of such a motion capture system using existing commercial hardware. More specifically, a mobile phone was utilized as the receiver device for real-time visualization, whereas BLE sensors were used in order to test the feasibility of the technology for actual use and to identify the bottlenecks in the system for future optimizations. The designed prototype system achieved similar or better performance for the static accuracy and delays in the system when compared to the currently existing commercial suits, while providing a feasible throughput for real-time motion capturing.