IMU-integrated Optical Navigation System for Tracking Multi-agent

In this paper, an IMU-integrated optical navigation system is presented. In the existing motion capture system, it was necessary to use the geometry of the recognized multiple markers to obtain the attitude of the object. On the other hand, in the proposed system, with only a small number of cameras, real-time output of 6-DOF including position and attitude was enabled by compactly implementing a single infrared marker with embedded IMU and computing board as an agent module. As a result of the development, it was possible to dramatically improve the problem of the existing rigid body-based attitude estimation method in which the attitude estimation error changes according to the distance from the cameras. In addition, according to the wireless time synchronization implementation of the camera and the agent, unique identification and tracking for each of the multiple agents operating in the same system was enabled. Therefore, this system is expected to have a very high potential for use in factory automation (FA) and robotics. In this paper, the principle of this system and each system component are explained.