Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!milton!whit
From: whit@milton.u.washington.edu (John Whitmore)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Looking for 6-degree-of-freedom tracking device
Message-ID: <1991Jun21.183522.25618@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 21 Jun 91 18:35:22 GMT
References: <3372@ria.ccs.uwo.ca>
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 22

In article <3372@ria.ccs.uwo.ca> ppicot@irus.rri.uwo.ca (Paul Picot) writes:
>
>    I have a problem that I think sci.electronics participants might
>find interesting:  I need to track the position and orientation of a
>hand-held object in real time and I'm hunting for ideas.  I've heard
>this called a 6DOF (6 degrees of freedom) tracker.

	While I don't know a POSITION sensor, there is a device 
(Ultra Sphere?  Cyber Sphere?) that has seven degrees of freedom as
a hand-held controller.  It is a stationary ball with strain gages
that measure three directions of translation forces and three axes
of torsion as well as detecting squeezing motions.  There's one connected
to a Silicon Graphics workstation at the UofWA Human Interface
Technologies laboratory.  Actually using this much information in
a single program (something like a walk-through demo) is probably
a tad tricky, though; I don't know if it has been worked up that
far yet.  
	The benefit of this approach is that the stationary sphere
can be mounted on a strut which (because the sphere doesn't really
move or rotate) will not get in the user's way.

	John Whitmore