Networking Consumer Systems to Provide a Development Environment for Inside-Out Marker-Less Tracking for Virtual Reality Headsets

Many companies are working to create inside-out marker-less tracking for virtual reality headsets. Inside-out marker-less tracking can be found on consumer augmented reality devices, but currently there is no system available to researchers, developers, or consumers that provides this feature without custom hardware and software. Our research provides a development environment for testing content that would take advantage of this feature before consumer level inside-out marker-less virtual reality systems hit the market. The solution utilizes current commercial off-the-shelf hardware systems, and by networking them together, allows the user to move through a captured environment without needing tracking towers. Ultimately, it provides researchers and developers the opportunity to test content that both takes advantage of the free movement through rooms provided by inside-out tracking and is yet constrained by real-world boundaries such as walls within the virtual environment.