The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2022–2024
Sony puts full-body motion capture in six sensors — mocopi wins Red Dot 2024's top prize
Sony's mocopi replaces the motion-capture studio with six 8g sensors and a phone app that drive any 3D avatar in real time — Red Dot's top prize 2024
Sony Corporation
What it had to solve
Full-body motion capture traditionally meant marker suits, cameras, base stations and studio time — out of reach for individual VTubers, indie developers and metaverse users. Sony set out to make body movement a consumer input.
How it works
In November 2022 Sony announced mocopi: six button-sized, 8-gram sensors and a smartphone app that capture full-body movement in real time — no suit, no cameras, no base station. The sensors sit on the head, hip, wrists and ankles and pair by Bluetooth, and the app fuses them into motion data that drives 3D avatars.
The data streams into metaverse applications and 3D software through an SDK, opening the system to Unity and other tools. At ¥49,500 (about $360), it made a capability that once required studio budgets available as a consumer product, aimed first at VTubers and early metaverse creators.
In April 2024 mocopi won Red Dot: Best of the Best in Product Design; Sony's own award description highlights how six small sensors and an exclusive app 'capture full-body movement anywhere' and expand the productive power of creators such as VTubers.
Why it lands
- It changed the unit of motion capture from a studio to a wearable set you charge like earbuds
- Six 8g sensors plus a phone replaced cameras, base stations and marker suits — collapsing the cost barrier
- An SDK opened the motion data to Unity and 3D tools, turning the product into a platform for creators
- It aimed at VTubers and metaverse users first — a market professional gear ignored — instead of protecting the old studio business
What it did
The system won Red Dot: Best of the Best 2024 in Product Design, with Sony pitching it as a way to expand 'the productive power of creators such as VTubers' — turning a studio service into a ¥49,500 consumer device.
What you can take
Change the unit of capture: instead of selling studio services, Sony shrunk a complex system to six sensors plus a phone — making a professional tool a consumer accessory.
Since then
mocopi went on sale in Japan in late January 2023 and reached China later that year at ¥2,499. Sony kept extending it beyond avatar creation, and the six-sensor-plus-phone formula became shorthand for lightweight body tracking. The Red Dot Best of the Best win in 2024 cemented its shift from metaverse novelty to a recognized design achievement.
Sources
- Red Dot Award 2024 / Awards / Sony
- Sony is getting into the metaverse with a new motion-tracking system
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card