SIX-DEGREE-OF-FREEDOM INTEGRATED COIL AC MAGNETIC TRACKER

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To allow tracking having six degree of freedom to be widely used.;SOLUTION: The 3-axis field source coils and 3-axis source coils derived from off-the-shelf suppliers in a magnetic tracker are integrated with driving and sensing circuitry to provide a complete six-degree-of-freedom tracker in only two modules. That is to say, the tracker can track by a sensor module and a field source module by using at least a second sensor of identical design. One or both of the basic tracker modules may be mounted on respective printed-circuit boards, and the field source module may take advantage of digital wave generation and tuned coil drivers for reduced hardware. One or both of the coil sets may be non-concentric, and the output for providing P&O updates to a host computer may take advantage of a connector that receives electrical power from the host computer, such as a USB/USB-2 connector. To further reduce system cost, the circuitry used to amplify the signals received by the sensor coils may be multiplexed under control of the processor on the field source board.;COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT