PTrack: Introducing a Novel Iterative Geometric Pose Estimation for a Marker-based Single Camera Tracking System

to present a challenge in terms of performance, robustness and accuracy. In particular mobile augmented reality applications are in need of tracking systems which can be wearable and do not cause a high processing load. In this paper we introduce a novel iterative geometric method for pose estimation from four co-planar points and we present the current status of PTrack, a marker-based single camera tracking system benefiting from this approach. The system uses an IDS uEye [1] camera, equipped with infrared flash strobes and infrared pass filter, which acquires grayscale images and sends them to a computer where an image pre-processing algorithm identifies potential projections of retro-reflective markers. Our novel pose estimation algorithm identifies possible labels composed of markers in a 2D post-processing using a divide-and-conquer strategy to segment the camera´s image space and attempts an iterative geometric 3D reconstruction of position and orientation in camera space. In the end successfully reconstructed labels are compared to a database for identification. Their 6 DoF data as well as their ID is made available to applications through OpenTracker [2] framework. To assess the performance of our approach we compared PTrack to ARToolKit [3] - which has been adapted to work with the same camera - and final results show that pose estimation is more accurate and precise, in both translation and rotation.