My Team of Engineers
I met the team of senior engineering students who will be creating the “Text Rain” simulation for the beginning of my piece. The system will have to track the dancer at approximately 30Hz aggregate rate and 5cm precision, be completely wirelessly operated, and integrated into a data collection system. We plan on testing technologies such as video tracking, ultrasound, IEEE 802.11, and wireless sensor networks.
For the video tracking system, LED lights would be incorporated into the dancer’s costume to create different points along the body. These lights would be invisible to the human eye, but by using a infrared filter, all visible light would be blocked and the camera would only see the points on the dancer.
The ultrasound system would also need to be incorporated into the dancer’s costume. It would be used to calculate the time of flight from the transmitter to the receiver. Different frequencies would be used for different parts of the body and a rough figure of the dancer could be shaped in the computer system.
IEEE 802.11 or Drexel wireless would be used to find the location of the dancer on stage; however, this system is only useful in providing the general position of a person. We are looking into adding additional access points or incorporating directional antennas to improve the accuracy of the system.
The wireless sensor network uses small, battery operated RF Motes. These motes are basically computers that contain different sensor packages which would enable the use of accelerometer inputs for motion tracking.
We will be using the Flash API (Application Programming Interface) to bring the positional data from the dancer and interact with the animation in real-time.