Magnetic Tracker

The requirements for a head mounted tracker used to relay the operator's head position to the remote pan/tilt unit are listed below.

• Light weight - Must not encumber the operator's head, or else the operator will become fatigued quickly.
  
  
• Fast sampling rate - If the sampling rate is too low, the operator will experience excessive lag between his head motions and the motions of the pan/tilt unit. This can cause overcompensation by the operator, as well as motion sickness.
  
  
• Interface to operator workstation - The tracker must somehow be able to interface with the operator workstation, which communicates with the pan/tilt server.
  
  

The Ascension Technologies Flock of Birds six degree of freedom (position and orientation) magnetic tracker meets all of these requirements. This type of tracker is used in virtual reality research. It has a reporting rate of 30 updates per second and uses an RS232 interface, which is available on the operator workstation. The specifications appear in the table below.