Portable, Real-time Shape Capture

Thin, flexible fiber optic shape sensing arrays (known commercially as ShapeTapes™) may be affixed to objects to infer shape of the object from the shape of the tape. Signals from bend and twist sensors in the tape are used to calculate 3D Cartesian position and orientation of all points along the tape in real time. Spatial integration and modelling techniques make it possible to use these tapes to capture the static and dynamic shape of a surface in difficult environments where other systems may suffer from occlusion or distorting fields. This paper discusses techniques to optimize data collection from moving human subjects.