QualiTrack: Highspeed TUI Tracking for Tabletop Applications

In this paper, we present a new technology to track multiple active Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) on a projection table. We use a commercial high speed infrared tracking camera with modified firmware. With a special tracking method, we reach update rates of up to 250 Hz with low latencies. At this tracking rate, we are able to track the position, state and the orientation of more than 10 active TUIs on the table. For this, we use specified bit codes which are transmitted by the devices. We developed dedicated hardware (SyncUnit) and software to keep the devices and the high speed camera synchronized. The system of camera, SyncUnit, and devices is fully hardware controlled and delivers event coded tracking data for further usage in interactive applications.