A Real-Time Optical 6D Tracker for Head-Mounted Display Systems
Abstract
Significant advance has been made towards realistic synthesis and display of three-dimensional objects using computers during the past two decades. However, the interaction between human and computer-generated scenes remains largely remote through devices such as keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc. Head-mounted display provides a mechanism for much more realistic visualizing and interacting with computer-generated 3D scenes through the hand-eye-body coordination exercised daily. Head-mounted display systems require that the position and orientation of the user's head be tracked in real time with high accuracy in a large working environment. Current 6D positional tracking devices (3 translational and 3 rotational parameters) fail to satisfy these requirements. In this dissertation, a new system for real-time, six-dimensional position tracking is introduced, studied, and documented. This system adopts an inside-out tracking paradigm. The working environment is a room in which the ceiling is lined with a regular pattern of infrared LED beacons which are flashing (invisible to the human eyes) under the system's control. Three cameras are mounted on a helmet which the user wears. Each camera uses a lateral effect photodiode as the recording surface. The 2D image positions of the flashing beacons inside the field of view of the cameras are recorded and reported in real time. The measured 2D image positions and the known 3D positions of beacons are used to compute the position of the camera assembly in space. (rh)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 1990
- Accession Number
- ADA222884
Entities
People
- Jih-fang Wang
Organizations
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill