PORTABLE ABSOLUTE POSITION TRACKING SYSTEM FOR HUMAN HAND FINGERTIPS

There is absence of high precision truly portable human hand and fingertip trackers that are able to provide absolute position and motion data. Data of this format is vital to work in telerobotics, VR and human performance assessment. This paper will show the development of a new light weight, high precision and dedicated human hand magnetic tracking system. It will be shown that this magnetic tracker has distinct benefits compared to other tracking techniques. The tracker presented is smaller then any other hand tracking system currently reported and moreover provides absolute fingertip tracking in all six degrees of freedom with absolute accuracy of 0.2 mm. The paper will describe the operation of the device which is based on near magnetic field coupling and consists of one transmitter antenna triad and six receiver antenna triads. The transmitter and receiver antennas triads are enclosed in a cubical casing. The base transmitter station is mounted on the dorsal surface of the hand and the receivers are mounted on the fingertips and any arm point to be tracked. The tracker is completely battery powered and has complete wireless compatibility with the Bluetooth wireless specification. Use of the Bluetooth standard, ensures that the tracker can have a cable-free connection to computers, PDAs or other electronic equipment.