Creating a 'Magic Lens'

An introduction to the project is available here.

I am developing a person-portable telepresence device using a PDA. Max Smolens wrote the original PDA client/server code, designed for the HiBall trackers. Since Max graduated, I've taken over the code base and converted it to track a fiducial marker with a greyscale camera, eliminating the need for the HiBall infrastructure. The two-handed interaction with patient surrogate and PDA has proven quite useful. I also spent a few months working with inertial measuring units and learning about tracking and filtering.

Future research directions include studying the effectiveness of the user interface and how many tracked degrees of freedom are really necessary in this application, and making the surrogate active in tracking, perhaps via five sequenced IR LEDs or magnetics.

A WMV encoded movie of the PDA system in action is available here.

The 'magic lens' in action.

Right now, the tracking and generation are done on a PC.