Stereoscopic 3D-Sketching with WiiMote

What is this Exploration about?

In this exploration I use 2 WiiMotes to track an active target. Through triangulation I am able to sketch in 3D.

How was it done?

For the exploration OpenFrameworks was used as a programming framework. Infront of me I positioned two WiiMotes for stereoscopically tracking an active IR target in my hand (Pen with battery, motor for haptic feedback, IR-LED and a button to activate both.) Only 3DOF can be tracked as the target has only one active LED. However this can be extended to 6DOF if needed as the WiiMote supports up to 4 blob detections.

Active sketching

I made some videos while playing around with the code. The second half of the video shows the switching to passive sketching.

Passive sketching

After a about 30 minutes of playing around with this new style of interaction technique one gets to understand what is possible. As the canvas is 3D and time based, one can sketch in a passive way by just positioning the physical pen and let the canvas move.

Results

It is amazing to see how fast the system reacts to the hand movements. In the demo the speed was limited to sampling frequency of 100 Hz and no camera external filters or estimation algorithms were used. The quality of the data output of the WiiMote cam is really amazing and one has not really to care about any noise problems.
I will experiment with some other the camera initializations in future, to extend the maximal tracking range for outdoor scenarios.