TDK Corporation expands its Chirp Microsystems ultrasonic product portfolio with Chirp SonicTrack, an ultrasonic six-degree-of-freedom (6-DoF) controller tracking solution for all-in-one (AIO) virtual reality (VR) systems. Chirp SonicTrack is an inside-out tracking system that fuses ultrasonic and inertial sensor data to provide 6-DoF position and orientation tracking of a hand-held controller with sub-millimeter precision over a field of view (FoV) of over 240 degrees. The first VR system to use the SonicTrack tracking solution is the developer kit of HTC’s Vive Focus all-in-one VR system, where Chirp-enabled 6-DoF controllers allow users to experience immersive VR content with a standalone headset.
Powered by Chirp’s tiny, ultra-low power ultrasonic transceiver product, the CH-101, Chirp SonicTrack is the only inside-out tracking solution on the market today based on true 3D position information. The position tracking system utilizes sonar by transmitting ultrasonic pulses between CH-101 sensors inside the VR system’s head-mounted display (HMD) and the hand-held controllers, providing 3D position information of the controllers relative to the HMD. Competing camera-based solutions have only 2D image data, requiring computation-intensive image processing from multiple cameras to estimate 3D position information. Chirp’s true 3D ultrasonic sensing advantage results in a solution that is much lower power and better optimized for the mobile processors used in all-in-one VR/AR/XR systems. The CH-101’s omnidirectional response makes it easy to track controllers over an extremely wide field of view – another advantage over camera-based systems.
Chirp SonicTrack is designed to enable VR system providers to introduce their own 6-DoF controllers with fast time-to-market. Chirp supplies a hardware reference design and the complete software stack, including a state-of-the-art sensor fusion software library. Relative to a 3-DoF controller design, a Chirp SonicTrack 6-DoF controller requires only the addition of CH-101 ultrasonic sensors. The small size of these sensors gives customers flexible industrial design options for VR controllers and HMDs. The Chirp SonicTrack sensor fusion software library uses minimal processor resources and is ready for use on Qualcomm Snapdragon and other mobile processors.
Chirp Microsystems, a TDK group company, will showcase the Chirp SonicTrack platform, along with a comprehensive portfolio of sensors, electronic components and solutions for mobile, wearables, AR/VR, automotive, IoT and industrial applications at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada this January 8 – 11, 2019. See the exhibition in LVCC, South Hall 3, Booth #30306.
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