Traditional computer vision systems do not actually "see"
The term computer vision is used loosely, typically referring to computer systems that use algorithms, not vision, to compare simple to complex patterns in images. For example, a conveyor belt system sorting apples will recognize only round shapes of a specific color. The system compares a reference apple's shape and color with each apple on the belt and makes decisions based on how much each apple differs from the reference. If the system is shown a banana, it will tell you that it is a bad apple, but won't recognize it as a banana. It is quickly evident that a patterns comparison based approach becomes overwhelmed, particularly if the patterns dynamically change shape as they do with a moving human body.
To get around this problem of tracking complex changing shapes, a pattern comparison 'cheat' was designed to track humans – glue round shapes to people and track these artificial 'markers'. Software then reconstructs the position of the human body based on the changing position of the attached markers. The idea is simple: If the dot attached to a hand is moving to the left, chances are the hand is moving to the left.
Limitations of marker-based systems
The problem with this approach is huge – the computer can only track people wearing precisely placed and calibrated markers. This setup process is time-consuming and costly, and in many cases provides sub-par results that don't truly track the person. This 'marker-based' approach makes most tracking applications difficult if not impossible, and has marginalized human motion capture to the domain of limited industrial uses. This marker-based pattern comparison method is still incorporated into all optical systems tracking humans today, except for ours.
How Organic Motion sees
Under development for four years, Organic Motion's founder Andrew Tschesnok's efforts yielded hundreds of thousands of lines of now patent-pending code which makes up the heart of the first commercial markerless motion capture system. Organic Motion broke from the pattern comparison approach completely. Tschesnok created a thinking system which looks at people in a manner very similar to the way the brain process human vision.