Personal Area Tracking

6DOF Wireless Personal Area Tracking for 3D Man-Machine Interface and Its Application to VR and AR

Target Applications:

• 3D input for virtual, mixed, and augmented realty (VR, MR, & AR) systems

• Motion capture systems

• Medical training

• Sports training

• Industrial training

• Interactive 3D movies

[Youtube Video 1]

[Youtube Video 2]

Overview: The team is developing a wireless magnetic beacon-based 3D position/orientation sensing module and its application to a 3D man-machine interaction system (ex: a 3D input device for virtual reality systems). The unique characteristics of the 3D interaction device include non-line-of-sight capability, absolute position and orientation tracking without drifting, haptic feedback capability, low computation need, high accuracy, and high reading speed.

Intellectual Merit: Existing 3D position tracking for 3D man-machine interaction applications utilize optical video sensors, infrared sensors, inertial sensors, ultrasound sensors, and bending sensors. Despite recent progress, there remain several fundamental challenges including line-of-sight requirements and haptic-feedback issues for optical sensing and drift issues in inertial sensing. Magnetic beacon-based position and orientation sensing has been used primarily for medical and gaming applications largely because of their large size and heavy computing issues. The technology currently under development by the team mitigates the size and computing issues in magnetic beacon-based position/orientation sensing, allowing its applications to a broader range of systems including consumer electronics, personal computing, mobile, and wearable.

Broader Impact: 3D sound and video technologies have created an uncountable number of applications and resulted in a significant societal and commercial impact. 3D printing technology is also quickly becoming a strong driver for many innovative market segments. As happened in audio, video, and printing, 3D interaction will become a norm and has a great potential for a significant commercial impact. One of the most important technologies for implementing an intuitive and immersive 3D man-machine interaction system is 3D tracking (motion sensing) technology. The current 3D man-machine interaction market is segmented into a few small segments and remains small largely because of the limitations in existing technologies. The end-users and solution providers are still looking for a compact, easy-to-use, and intuitive 3D man-machine interaction solution. As the mouse completely changed the way man and computer interact during the last several decades, an easy-to-use, intuitive, and natural 3D man-computer/machine interaction device will make a great impact on the way that man interacts with computers/machines, resulting in a significant commercial impact in a broad range of application areas.

• R Abhishek Shankar, Mohit Singh, and Byunghoo Jung, "Amplitude Recovery of Saturated Sinusoidal Signals," 2021 IEEE Sensors.

• Mohit Singh, R. Abhishek Shankar, and Byunghoo Jung, "Inside-Out Magnetic Tracking for Virtual/Augmented Reality Applications," IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 21, December 2021.

• Mohit Singh, Ravi Abhishek Shankar, and Byunghoo Jung, "Magnetic Position Tracking using Inductor Coils and IMU," 2020 IEEE SENSORS.

• Mohit Singh and Byunghoo Jung, "High-Definition Wireless Personal Area Tracking using AC Magnetic Field for Virtual Reality," IEEE Virtual Reality Conference, March 2017.

• Mohit Singh and Byunghoo Jung, "Live Demo: High-Definition Wireless Personal Area Tracking using AC Magnetic Field," IEEE Sensors, Oct. 2016. - Third place winner of the Best Live Demo.