Positional Tracking for vast open spaces?
Hi People I'm currently doing some research on positional tracking. I didn't know if there were any people on the forum who really have extensive knowledge on the matter? What it is I'm actually l...
Forum Discussion
When you say lasers on tripods do you mean surveyor type lasers pointing a the hard hat to measure distance? Surveyor lasers typically measure to within a few millimeters, but in order to keep pointed at the hard hat it would need to have some motorized automatic tracking, if you knowing the angles from the tripods you can triangulate from the angles anyway making the lasers superfluous. Which brings us back to optical tracking. And array of infrared LEDs like on the DK2/Crystal cove tracked by near infrared camera on tripods, to work accurately from long distance they would have to have motorized tracking from a zoom lens. A construction site is a tricky environment with new walls and stuff going up blocking line of site. But the like the QR codes the LED dots on the hard hat are of known dimensions so as long as one camera keep track of you the angle, orientation and distance to the camera can be calculated. But this would not scale well to multiple users as using wide angle lenses to track multiple users would reduce accuracy, Oculus recommends for using the DK2 within 2.5 meters of the the camera for instance.
This could also be done by putting QR codes on the helmet, the reasons Oculus went for an LED pattern DK2 instead is that they can put a narrow frequency infrared filter on the cameras CCD. So that the LEDs are pretty much all the camera can see making recognizing them easier, it can also then use 1bit color allowing it to to run faster at a higher resolution. Apart from the infrared filter its just a standard camera so pretty cheap. LEDs can also be turned off and on in sequence helping the software sort out which is which. LEDs are also cheaper than the infrared reflectors used by the film industry.
They parts can be had off the shelf but it would probably require allot of custom programming even if you licensed existing MoCap software.
The reason I suggested QR codes before is that I though it sounded like a VR or AR experience in an exhibition type space that might have lots of people walking around with mobile part driven VR helmets, which would suit itself to the Valve solution of covering the walls and floor with QR codes.
There are lots of industries that would like millimeter accurate position/motion capture without wires or line of site but unfortunately there is no magic bullet solution.
This could also be done by putting QR codes on the helmet, the reasons Oculus went for an LED pattern DK2 instead is that they can put a narrow frequency infrared filter on the cameras CCD. So that the LEDs are pretty much all the camera can see making recognizing them easier, it can also then use 1bit color allowing it to to run faster at a higher resolution. Apart from the infrared filter its just a standard camera so pretty cheap. LEDs can also be turned off and on in sequence helping the software sort out which is which. LEDs are also cheaper than the infrared reflectors used by the film industry.
They parts can be had off the shelf but it would probably require allot of custom programming even if you licensed existing MoCap software.
The reason I suggested QR codes before is that I though it sounded like a VR or AR experience in an exhibition type space that might have lots of people walking around with mobile part driven VR helmets, which would suit itself to the Valve solution of covering the walls and floor with QR codes.
There are lots of industries that would like millimeter accurate position/motion capture without wires or line of site but unfortunately there is no magic bullet solution.