About the fourMs Lab

Most of the motion capture studies at RITMO are conducted in the ​fourMs lab, a world-class research infrastructure for studies of human body movement and physiology in an immersive multimedia environment.

The lab’s name implies that four M’s are in focus: Music, Mind, Motion, Machines. This is because the researchers in the lab come from the fields of musicology, psychology, informatics, and robotics.

Built as a flexible black box, it also allows for running small concerts with an audience. This makes it possible to carry out both observation and intervention studies. The lab has controlled lighting, damped acoustics, and a large (and quiet!) ventilation system. It is also set up to be flexible so that we can easily connect equipment in various ways.

The lab houses a large range of motion capture systems (both optical and inertial), different types of physiological sensing (EMG and ECG), and a setup for multichannel audio (24 channels) and video (4 channels) recording. The high-density speaker array (24 channels) can create immersive audio experiences for other experiments. All the systems can be combined in different ways, with frame-based synchronization, allowing for many behavioural experiments.

While the lab is great for many things, it is also relevant to do motion capture outside the lab. For example, music performances are best studied in a more normal concert setting. At RITMO, we often do studies both within and outside of the lab.

In this course, we will move between the fourMs Lab and a temporary motion capture setup in the foyer of the University Library. This is to explain some of the pros and cons of both in-lab and out-of-lab motion capture.