Exercise P1: Plier Movement

Peter Kelly, Abel Tesfaye, ES

For this exercise we chose to capture the motion of a pair of pliers being rotated by hand. This motion could be used to bend wire or other similar materials. While arranging the sensors on top of the pliers we had to give special consideration to the fact that they would need to stay in view of the cameras while being rotated. This did end up giving us some trouble, resulting in a few null data sets. Overall the movements were well recorded and we were able to accurately graph the movement in grasshopper. Below is a photo of the original tool and a rendering of the 3D model used in our final animation.

Original Tool
Simplified 3D Model

During the course of the movement you can see where the pliers were rotated back and forth, as well as the sway of the hand that was holding the tool. The null data sets were only found when the tool was rotated far more than ninety degrees, leading to one or more of the sensors to be facing the table. It’s interesting to see how the inflection points of the motion seem to stay relatively consistent however you can still see that this was not an operation carried out by a precisely calibrated machine. Below is the final animation created during this exercise.

MoCap Animation

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