A short guide to modulated light

Many types of tangible interaction systems, such as interactive surfaces and gesture-based interfaces, are based on various kinds of optical tracking, using infrared illuminators and cameras. One drawback of these setups is that they suffer from problems common to optical trackers, such as sensitivity to stray environment light from artificial and natural sources. In this paper, we present a method to significantly enhance tracking robustness for those systems which employ active illumination. Through addition of a small electronic circuit which modulates the LEDs used to illuminate the scene, contrast can be significantly increased. Author Keywords input device, hardware, optical tracking, infrared ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 Information Interfaces and Presentation: User Interfaces—Input Devices

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: TEI
• Authors: Florian Echtler, Tobias Sielhorst, Manuel Huber, Gudrun Klinker
• Keywords: Gesture-based Interfaces, Hardware, Optical Tracking, Tangible Interaction Systems, TEI 2009