New Motion Capture And Animation Technique

I am far from an expert on motion capture and animation, but this article from New Scientist makes this new technique sound interesting (direct video link). The video shows a person animating a 3D laser-scan of another person (the point being that the system can realistically alter the surface of the 3D avatar simply based on the movement of the real-life person). It looks very useful for video games, film, but perhaps also live demonstrations and may be especially applicable to machinima.