A novel optical and magnetic hybrid system for tracking flying insects

摘要

Video tracking is necessary for measuring the deformation of flying insects' wings and investigating their motion patterns. However the tracking speed is limited by the frame frequency of the camera for a conventional video tracking system. And for a system based on high-speed camera, it is difficult to process the images in real time. Here we proposed an optical and magnetic hybrid tracking system. In this system, search coil sensors are utilized to detect the magnetic field on the position of the target within a cubic space, where the magnetic fields distributed. Then a computer and signal processing circuits are used to determine the coordinates. As a result, the target's images can be captured by a video tracking system including a high-speed camera and a two-dimensional tracking mirror. The target can be a flying insect or other moving objects. When it carries the sensors and moves in the magnetic field, the system can track it and take pictures, In this paper we present the details of the hybrid tracking system and make a discussion on it.