EE 267 Virtual Reality Course Notes: 6-DOF Pose Tracking with the VRduino

Positional tracking can be implemented with a variety of technologies. Commercially-available systems include mechanical trackers, magnetic trackers, ultrasonic trackers, and GPS or WIFI-based tracking. The most widely used technology, however, is optical tracking. In optical tracking, one or more cameras observe a set of reference points, for example infrared LEDs or actively illuminated retroreflective markers mounted on a VR controller or a headset (e.g., Oculus Rift and Sony’s Playstation VR headset). The pose of HMD or controller is then estimated from the measured locations of the LEDs or markers in the camera image. The arrangement of the markers on the tracked device is usually known from its design or calibrated by the manufacturer. This problem is known as the perspective-n-point problem and of importance in camera calibration, 3D computer vision, and other fields.