Performance Evaluation of a Commercial Electromagnetic Tracking Controller for Motion Capture

Abstract

Optical motion capture and inertial measurement units (IMU) systems are the most common technologies for human motion capture. However, both of these echnologies have various limitations. Besides those technologies, other techniques such as magnetic motion capture are also used for position tracking. Magnetic motion trackers consist of two main elements: one magnetic source and one or several magnetic sensors. The transmitter generates a magnetic field by applying a current through a coil and the position and orientation are calculated by measuring the field strength in the receiver coils. Despite being easily affected by ferromagnetic materials, magnetic motion capture systems can provide position and orientation with high accuracy and are not affected by occlusion nor drift. In this study, we evaluate the performance of a cheap commercial electromagnetic tracker (Razer Hydra) by comparing the estimated 3D position with an optical motion capture system.