A vision-based head tracking system for fully immersive displays

Abstract

Six-sided fully immersive projective displays present complex and novel problems for tracking systems. Existing tracking technologies typically require tracking equipment that is placed in locations or at- tached to the user in a way that is suitable for typical displays of five or less walls but which would interfere with the immersive experience within a fully enclosed display. This paper presents a novel vision-based tracking technology for fully-immersive projective displays. The technology relies on the operator wearing a set of laser diodes arranged in a specific configuration and then visually tracking the projection of these lasers on the external walls of the display outside of the user's view. This approach places minimal hardware on the user and no visible tracking equipment is placed within the immersive environment. This paper describes the basic visual tracking system including the hardware and software infrastructure.