Enhanced location tracking in sensor fusion-assisted virtual reality micro-manipulation environments

PLoS One. 2021 Dec 28;16(12):e0261933. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261933. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology plays a significant role in many biomedical applications. These VR scenarios increase the valuable experience of tasks requiring great accuracy with human subjects. Unfortunately, commercial VR controllers have large positioning errors in a micro-manipulation task. Here, we propose a VR-based framework along with a sensor fusion algorithm to improve the microposition tracking performance of a microsurgical tool. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of Kalman filter in a millimeter scale VR environment, by using the position data between the VR controller and an inertial measuring device. This study builds and tests two cases: (1) without sensor fusion tracking and (2) location tracking with active sensor fusion. The static and dynamic experiments demonstrate that the Kalman filter can provide greater precision during micro-manipulation in small scale VR scenarios.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Algorithms
  • Computers
  • Equipment Design
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Man-Machine Systems*
  • Micromanipulation
  • Movement
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Software
  • User-Computer Interface*
  • Virtual Reality*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the DGIST R&D Program of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Technology of Korea (21-RT-01).