Virtual environments using the Ninendo Wiimote

Abstract

The Wiimote is a collection of various peripherals which collect data from the user's input; amongst these peripherals are the accelerometers and the sensor camera. The data collected by these peripherals is transmitted via Bluetooth and thus by pairing the Wiimote with a Bluetooth enabled PC host we can process this information ourselves. To be able to read and write to the Wiimote we will explore the Bluetooth HID device protocol and what software constructs we need to use to interface with it. It is the aim of this thesis to create a 3D environment and track the position of the user's head and respond to his or her movements in a fashion that should generate a realistic three-dimensional viewing experience. To do so we will attach infra red LEDs to a pair of safety glasses which the user will wear and calculate the 3D positioning through the Wiimote's sensor output. The Wiimote camera can track up to four infra red sources but only in the 2D plane (X, Y), to calculate the depth we use basic trigonometry by calculating the relative ve1tical angle through the two point~ obtained. The thesis will take the form of an experiment which will provide a control where the head tracking algorithm will be used on simple graphical objects which have been already been constructed successfully and tested multiple times. We will remove the manual rotation of viewing of these objects and replace it with the head tracking technology which will not only give us an indication as to how effective the technology is but also how easy it is to integrate in already existing projects. The second phase will be to experiment how the technology works when integrated in a proper modern graphical engine such as OGRE. We will be constructing our own simple game engine to incorporate all the aspects that are usually expected of a rich 3D environment such as animation, sound, input management and collision detection and we will experiment how these are affected by the head tracking technology since the manual input is being inserted into the system through non orthodox means. We will also make use of a second Wiimote to give the opportunity for the player to interact further with the 3D objects on screen by re-creating the pointer functionality of the Wiimote for the PC. The aim of this thesis was to produce a cheap alternative to already available head tracking devices on the market with equal, or almost equal, functionality for a modest price and most importantly to find out if this technology has a place in the entertainment or HCI industry. After we have implemented the above mentioned demos we have exposed them to selected testers both to evaluate the performance and appeal of this technology. We also used the data gathered from the feedback to produce another prototype amongst other designs which expand on both the hardware and software front.