Portable virtual reality: Inertial measurements and biomechanics

Abstract

This paper presents a portable virtual reality (VR) system that affords full-body tracking by using inertial measurement units (IMUs) and several aspects of human biomechanics. The current implementation uses a commercial IMU-based full-body tracking system that only reports the orientations of body segments. We have developed an anthropometry-based method that uses this orientation data to derive accurate body-segment positions. In turn, we use kinematics and heel-based translations to provide a theoretically infinite tracking space. A head-mounted display (HMD) is used to provide visual feedback of the user's full-body avatar and to convey physical locomotion through the virtual environment. We discuss key challenges to making this system usable in everyday environments, including calibration, ergonomics, drift, and collision avoidance.