MIT researchers have developed a new system called Second Skin that may provide a cheaper (less than $1,000) and more efficient way to track motion for creating special effects for movies.

Projectors send out patterns of near- infrared light–approximately 10,000 different patterns a second. When the patterns hit tiny photosensors embedded in the subject’s clothes, the photosensors capture the coded light and convert it into a unique binary signal that is transmitted to a computer via Bluetooth.