The ENIT (L’Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Tarbes, in France) is one of many customers using STT’s inertial sensors for research related to interactive virtual reality. Their lab, says Mourad Benoussaad, lead Engineer and Researcher at the site, “includes an optical-based motion capture system, a haptic arm, and a projectors for a stereo display”. He explains why they turned to IMUs: “As it known, an optical-based motion capture system is affected by occlusion problems due to passive markers being easily hidden by visual obstacles in actual scenarios. We try to keep as realistic as possible in our simulations, and therefore these sensors provide a valuable support”.
Their current work is focused on improving the accuracy of the overall tracking by applying several own-developed fusion algorithms. They have performed an extensive testing and some results reveal how the robustness can be notably increased. We’ll keep an eye on those developments, as they will surely become very significant for motion capture in this kind of interactive virtual reality applications.