bradley newman

This looks interesting. I like the fluorescent snakes (although they look a bit sperm-like) but I am biased into liking all things fluorescent!

Will you be tracking just 2D then since you will put the camera on top? It will be much faster this way so you can do some fancier heuristics for when the markers become occluded and you'll have some processor to spare for reacquisition functions too.

I used bracelets for my show and with trying different materials and surfaces, I learned that they had to be a little poofy and that matte materials worked best. That is if you are doing black light. Retro reflective materials don't work too well in large surfaces because they create hot spots.

Also, In a small space, pattern matching works very precisely. We saw a really cool demo at Siggraph with Perry on the Point Grey booth that was down to .1mm. But I assume you want to use glowstick bracelets?

I also tried glowsticks and if you find a brand that is bright enough, it works in a small space. You should count on using a few per hand however unless you oversaturate the camera in the dark. What suprised me is that fluorescent green seems very faint to the camera's and tracks badly, so do blue and purple.

If you are projecting on the dome you will have a lot of light bouncing that will illuminate things in an unpredictable way so black light may be a good option for you.

Tell us more! Tell us more!

brad, this stuff is looking really great. I think you'll have a pretty righteous sketchbook by the time this process is over with.

I was just at this sound installation over the weekend that used these terrible white hats to track your position, and I was thinking the whole time what a lame interface that was -- bracelets seem to make much more sense for providing relatively easy tracking, while being subtle and a nice fashion statement...

Thanks. Yes, I'm tracking only 2D using SoftVNS (though I'd love to do some side experiments in Tracy and Bernie's class with two cameras doing 3D). Sperm certainly was one of my interpretations.

I'm testing LED vs. Photoluminescent tape at the moment (tape is in the mail, gamerz case modders take note: http://www.identi-tape.com/phosphor.htm). The advantage it seems to LED is the brightness (I'd probably diffuse the light within some plastic or whatnot), but the drawback is the power source weight and bulk. I'm not sure how bright the photoluminescent tape will be (it's listed as "High-Intensity”). With both I'm concerned about how the projection will affect things. I plan to wrap the tape around a thick bracelet to get the right amount of "puffiness" for tracking robustness. Blacklight is interesting (and fun), but I'm concerned about 1. Heat within the dome 2. Mounting too many distractions in the ceiling of the dome. I suppose there are some small bulbs worth trying. Glow sticks could be worth trying if the tape isn't bright enough, although I like the reusability of the tape. I'll try and post some more sketches soon.

Note: The sketch is a little misleading and was done for illustration purposes. I'm actually planning to use only 3 colors for three pairs of bracelets (R,G,B). I'd like to be able to differentiate between people's left and right hands, but I don't see there being enough distinction in the rainbow to allow for SoftVNS to differentiate between 6 different colors, along with projection interference.

Well, I take it back. I'm going to try tracking 6 colors (rainbow) and see how well or not it works. Though I'm not terribly optimistic. If the light from the tape is fairly consistent in intensity from all angles, and I color the 6 lights as distinctly as possible, I might get something...

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