Miniature 6-DOF inertial system for tracking HMDs

Current HMD applications are hampered by the limitations of head-tracking technologies now in use. Commercially available magnetic, optical, acoustic, and mechanical head-trackers suffer from various problems such as vulnerability to interference, line-of-sight restrictions, jitter, latency, small range, and high cost. This paper presents inertial-sensor-based hybrid tracking technology that was developed to combat all these problems. Two commercially available products, the IS-300 and the IS600, are described, both based on the same miniature triaxial inertial sensor device. The IS-300 is a sourceless 3-DOF orientation tracker, using gravimetric tilt-sensing to prevent any gyroscopic drift in pitch and roll, and optional geo-magnetic compassing to prevent any gyroscopic drift in yaw. The IS-600 is a hybrid acousto-inertial 6-DOF position and orientation tracking system. It tracks changes in orientation and position by integrating the outputs of its gyros and accelerometers, and corrects drift using a room-referenced ultrasonic time-of-flight range measuring system. This paper overviews the theory of operation of both systems, and reports bench-testing results designed to evaluate the resolution, accuracy, and latency of each system.