An innovative design

  The tracker is a low cost and robust input device. It is based on standard components.
  It implements state of art algorithms developed by the computer vision community.
  It achieves accuracy to the millimeter at 30 frames per second. The latency is of 60 milliseconds.
  This single camera technology has a number of advantages over alternative solutions such as: magnetic trackers (sensitive to noise) and a multiple cameras tracker with a narrow field of view.
  No dedicated processing unit is required. The software runs on a standard PC (Linux or WINDOWS).
  The tracker is compatible with active stereo display technology.

Tracker performance

  Volume: 60 degrees (H) x 57 degrees (V) x 5 meters (D)
  Accuracy: 1 mm, 0.2 degree at 1.5 meter
  Frequency: 60 Hertz
  Latency: 60 ms
  Up to 4 targets simultaneously

The Tracker system elements

The Tracker system consists of the following components:

  The Tracker itself (Camera + IR Flash)
  Power supply (15 volts, 1.5 ampere)
  Cables (Power supply, FireWire)
  Rigid Bodies: different types of targets, built of spherical retro-reflecting markers, are available. The user may design its own targets for special applications.
  Software package: tracker program, configuration file, example of a VRPN server, example of a VRPN client.

About competitors

We list the main system competitors and give some comparison.

  Magnetic trackers (Polhemus Fast-Track, Ascension Technology Flock of Birds). They are disturbed by ferro-magnetic objects and other magnetic fields
  Optical Tracker composed of cameras mounted on a rig (North Digital Polaris). They have a narrow field of view. They are more expensive.
  Optical Tracker composed of non-fixed cameras (ART ArTrack). They have a narrow field of view. They do need an inter-camera registration procedure to be done. They are much more expensive.
  Others trackers (Natural Point OptiTrack). The OptiTrack system is less accurate and the field of view is narrower.

See also: The Cyclope Home Page