Correction of Tracking Distortion



This was not an industrial project, but my own research initiative.

The problem was, that due to metal, electro-magnetic tracking systems like Fastrak and Ascension reported distorted (i. e., wrong) positions and orientations of the tracking sensors. Without correction the image rendered in the cave would look like this:



while it really should look like this:



This is because if you place the sensor at a regular grid,

you get something like this:




I have developed a method to correct these distortions. It is able to correct translational as well as orientational errors. It is very fast (typ. < 1 millisecond). A further advantage is that it doesn´t require a grid-topology for the input set, in fact, the input set can be an arbitary set of points, which allows very fast semiautomatic collection of field data.

You can find more details on this method in my dissertation and an earlier paper.

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Gabriel Zachmann
Last modified: Sat Sep 10 16:01:08 MDT 2005