Light Chisel: 6DOF Pen Tracking

We present a novel interaction device tracked in 6 degrees of freedom by two commodity cameras. The inexpensive Light Chisel is statically illuminated with two LEDs, and uses no additional sensor (e.g. inertial or magnetic) or means of communication or synchronization. Its form factor is well suited for a screwdriver or chisel grip, allowing the Light Chisel to be rolled between the fingers. The position and orientation of the tool is tracked absolutely, making the Light Chisel suited for complex interaction, e.g. geometric modeling in augmented reality. The Light Chisel is physically small, limiting the physical and optical collisions with the real world. The orientation of the tool is tracked in a wide range of angles: pitch and yaw ±90°, roll ±180°. We evaluated our system against the OptiTrack optical tracking system. Our system achieved mean differences from OptiTrack reference of 2.07mm in position, 1.06° in yaw and pitch, and 5.26° in roll using a pair of VGA cameras. We demonstrate usefulness of our Light Chisel in four applications: character animation, modeling by swirls, volumetric modeling, and docking of CAD models.