Carnegie Mellon Robotics Labs Gain OptiTrack Motion Capture
OptiTrack has entered into a multi-year technology partnership with Carnegie Mellon University to equip two research facilities at the university’s newly opened Robotics Innovation Centre with motion capture systems. The installation spans the centre’s indoor Motion Capture Studio and outdoor Drone Cage, with 92 high-performance cameras deployed across the two spaces.
The partnership joins two institutions with established reputations in their fields. Carnegie Mellon is internationally known for research in robotics, automation and artificial intelligence. The Robotics Institute, founded in 1979 as the world’s first university robotics department, is consistently ranked among the world’s leading robotics programmes. OptiTrack, founded in 1996, has spent nearly 30 years developing motion capture systems used by thousands of research institutions worldwide.
The Robotics Innovation Centre, or RIC, opened with a grand ceremony on 27 February 2026. The event marked Carnegie Mellon’s work in robotics, physical AI, and advanced technology and its role in developing these technologies from laboratory settings to field deployment. The 150,000 square-foot facility is located at Hazelwood Green, a revitalised development on the former site of Pittsburgh’s historic Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill. It includes a 50,000-square-foot robotics testing floor, an aquatic research laboratory, a motion capture studio and a 6,000-square-foot outdoor drone cage.
The indoor Motion Capture Studio is fitted with 28 PrimeX41 cameras and four Prime Colour reference cameras. OptiTrack said the arrangement delivers micron-level precision throughout the studio’s full 2,800-square-foot volume. The outdoor Drone Cage is equipped with 60 VersaX120 cameras, which the company described as its highest-resolution outdoor cameras. Those cameras are built with IP66-rated weather protection and cover the full cage volume up to its 38-foot ceiling. Both systems use OptiTrack’s ActiveIO Tracking technology, which is designed to identify and track hundreds of objects simultaneously.
The equipment is intended to support a broad range of research activities at the RIC. Among the programmes named are autonomous aerial robotics and multi-robot coordination through Carnegie Mellon’s AirLab. The systems will also support robotic imitation learning and human activity modelling led by Associate Research Professor Kris Kitani. The work is consistent with the university’s recently announced Physical AI Accelerator, a state-backed expansion that brings together robotics, sensing, and intelligent systems.
OptiTrack has also become a sponsor of Carnegie Mellon’s Extended Reality Technology Centre, known as XRTC. The centre, launched in 2023, brings together researchers, industry and consumers to advance virtual reality, augmented reality and other extended reality technologies. Researchers at XRTC plan to use the OptiTrack equipment at the RIC to recreate movement in the virtual world.
The partnership adds another layer to Carnegie Mellon’s robotics infrastructure at a time when the university is expanding its physical and digital research capabilities. It also gives OptiTrack a role in supporting work across motion capture, robotics and extended reality at one of the most closely watched robotics centres in the United States. The two organisations are now linked through equipment, research use, and sponsorship, with the RIC serving as the main site for the motion-capture installation.
