Skeltrack: open source skeleton tracking library for Kinect

Skeltrack tracks up to seven joints using Microsoft's Kinect hardware Igalia, a Spanish consultancy and development company, has released an open source software library for skeleton tracking called "Skeltrack". The library is implemented with GLib and tracks different joints in the human skeleton from depth images using Microsoft's Kinect hardware, a motion-sensor accessory originally released for the Xbox 360 gaming console.

In a blog post, developer Joaquim Rocha says that Skeltrack – based on a paper by Andreas Baak about data-driven depth tracking – extracts skeleton joints using mathematics and heuristics, meaning that neither a calibration pose nor pose database is required. The Skeltrack framework uses Igalia's open source GFreenect library – a wrapper for the OpenKinect project's libfreenect library for controlling the Kinect – that was released earlier this year. Skeltrack currently supports a single user and can track up to seven joints: head, shoulders, elbows and hands.

The Skeltrack skeleton tracking library in action

Further information about Skeltrack can be found in Rocha's announcement blog post. Documentation for Skeltrack is provided on the Igalia web site. Source code is hosted on GitHub and licensed under the LGPLv3.

See also:

• Official open source driver for Kinect, a report from The H.

(crve)