UC Merced

In virtual reality (VR), real-time motion tracking is essential for the synchronization between virtual scenes and the real world. However, due to the limited availability of specific devices and the often expensive cost of existing tracking devices, this may prevent more people from having the opportunity to use VR technologies. In this thesis, I explore the process of connecting specific sensor configurations to a VR application in order to be able to customize motion sensors to specific applications, instead of having to rely on solutions that not often match the application needs. The MPU-6050 sensor is very accurate, as it contains 16-bits analog to digital conversion hardware for each channel. Therefore, it captures the x, y, and z channel at the same time. The sensor uses the I2C-bus to interface with the Arduino. The Arduino Ethernet Shield making use of UDP communication procedure provides us a convenient way to interact between Arduino and any desired software application. Finally, three experiments are carried out to demonstrate the application of real-time simulation under virtual environment, and the results show that this work can provide an accurate motion tracking for VR applications in real-time.