Abstract

The use of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) for medical and entertainment purposes seems promising because of their mostly very intuitive handling and playful aspect (computer mouse, steering wheel, etc.). TUIs can be supplemented with elements of mobile robots to allow independent movement as feedback. The Actuated Tangible User Interface Object-project (ACTO [3]) is focused on these actuated TUIs, resulting in cubic robots called ACTOs. Every ACTO is modularly composed and, in addition to the movement unit, can be equipped with a variety of input and output extensions. To control and coordinate the movement of the ACTOs, their position needs to be retrieved in real time. Every method of determining an ACTO-s position has its own advantages and disadvantages. Until now, the position was obtained by the optical tracking of a marker at the ACTO-s bottom. This tracking method provides precise, absolute tracking data but cannot cope with poor illumination or movement which is too fast. To compensate for these shortcomings, this thesis introduces an extension which supplements the existing tracking system by another tracking method based on two optical mouse sensors. In this process the translation along the X- and Y-axis is read from both sensors. Based on these four translation values, the ACTO-s translation and rotation and therefore its new position is computed. The thesis discusses the ideas leading to the design and construction of this relative tracking system and therefore elaborates on the development of the hard- and software, as well as the mathematical background. In the end it is shown that the supplement of the absolute tracking by the relative tracking based on two optical mouse sensors provides considerable advantages in terms of precision and robustness. The system is composed of low-priced, off-the-shelf components and is easily integrated into the existing ACTO system. Thus, the use of this system seems promising in various research areas. During the work on several prototypes and the coding of the software, great potential for more modifications and adaptions to various environments was revealed which is discussed in the last part of this thesis.

Reference

Bernhardt, D. (2016). Speckle Tracking : ACTO Tracking durch optische Maussensoren [Diploma Thesis, Technische Universität Wien]. reposiTUm. https://doi.org/10.34726/hss.2016.35420