We are proud to report that our associates at the University of Linz are making steady progress on the head tracking solution under the supervision of Aero Glass’ co-founder, Prof. Oliver Bimber. The quality and speed of the new Aero Glass head tracking prototype was tested in the air, under realistic conditions at the beginning of December.

The above solution consists of a tiny infrared camera attached to the BT-200, and a removable, lightweight plate of retro-reflective markers attached to the cockpit frame above the pilot’s seat.

This head tracking setup is reliable under all lighting conditions, including direct sun light, shadow, and at night, and it was tested in various lighting situations at different bank/pitch/yaw angles and altitudes of the aircraft with success: the head-tracker delivered a stable +/-1-degree precision in the visual field (i.e. 17mrad) at a speed of about 75 updates per second. This quality and speed is achieved by fusing precise optical tracking measurements of the infrared camera with fast sensor measurements of the gyroscope that is integrated in the BT-200.

As the current prototype only measures the pilot’s head pose inside the cockpit, in the next step, the aircraft’s position and pose in the air will be combined with the head tracking data to allow for the correct overlay of visuals under arbitrary viewing and flying directions. This integration is currently being implemented and tested.

In the future, the solution will rely on a different set of smart glasses, the ODG R-7  due to the reason that it offers a superior experience and the fact that there have been reliability issues with the Epson when used with the IR camera.