Participant Tracking in Immersive Training and Aiding Environments

Large volume, immersive simulation environments provide a compelling way to train and simulate operational systems. To provide realism to these training scenarios, tracking the absolute location (both position & orientation) of both the player under training and the devices that the player must interact with becomes paramount. In multi-user training environments, each player must also know the absolute locations of the other players for a successful training mission. In immersive Virtual Reality (VR) training with multiple users in a fixed environment, the absolute position and orientation of the head, weapon or virtual handheld devices (i.e. virtual binoculars) are not as important as resolution, latency and weight. For Augmented Reality (AR) training, the position and orientation of the display needs to be tracked accurately relative to the same world coordinate system in which objects in the environment are mapped. We are proposing autonomous tracking solutions that offer a wireless and networkable approach to instrumenting multiple players and devices in an indoor environment with minimal tracking reference infrastructure. Differing from Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) type tracking approaches, the proposed solutions will meet or exceed “AR-type” tracking accuracies of 0.1 degree in angle and 3 mm in position.