What do MEMS, Hollywood and video games have in common?

by R. Colin Johnson
Contributing Editor, MEMS Investor Journal

Two major motion pictures and two popular video game releases recently used a MEMS motion suit to enable live actors to control virtual characters in real time.  Actors in MEMS-sensor-studded suits performed the action scenes, but computer generated imagery (CGI) was what you saw.  The same MEMS motion suit that enabled the lifelike characters in Iron Man 2 and Alice in Wonderland, also enabled the recent video games Kill Zone 2 and Borderlands.

The common element here is a Lycra suit made by Xsens Technologies B.V. (Los Angeles and The Netherlands) and embedded with 85 accelerometers and gyroscopes from Analog Devices Inc. (NYSE: ADI).  Actors don the MEMS motion-suit under their clothing, enabling them to perform as usual, but all the while data is streaming in real time to drive computer-generated imagery (CGI) that renders the animated characters.

Before the MEMS motion suit, actors had to wear black suits over their clothing that were studded with white reflective dots, all on a darkened stage.  Directors then had to wait days or weeks for postprocessing steps to track the white dots and transform their motion into body orientations for the CGI.  But with the MEMS motion suits, directors can render CGI in real time, allowing them to see how the final movie will look on the normal set where scenes can be reshot, if necessary.

ADI assisted Xsens on the project and claims the MEMS motion suit is an example of a third phase in MEMS -- after  automobile airbags, and consumer devices like the Apple iPhone and Nintendo Wii.

"We are entering the third phase of MEMS commercialization, after automotive and consumer, where motion sensing technologies proliferate into a diverse variety of applications," said Mark Martin, Vice President, MEMS and Sensor Group, Analog Devices.

The Xsens suit has also streamlined pre-visualization -- what used to be called story boarding -- a visual rough draft of each scene in a new movie.  The pre-visualization studio The Third Floor animated Alice In Wonderland and Iron Man 2.

Copyright 2010 MEMS Investor Journal