College of Engineering Unit:
OptiTrack is a motion-tracking company that creates cameras and software to precisely track markers in space. The current system allows a volume of multiple cameras to identify and track markers with sub-millimeter precision at upwards of 120 frames per second and display the data in real time using their software, Motive. Optitrack has customers in cinematics, video game production, biomechanics, and manufacturing.
A number of Optitracks customers use ROS (Robot Operating System) on their robotic systems that Motive tracks. Because of this, there has been a demand for Optitrack’s Motive software to send its data directly to the robotic system running ROS. This project aims to expand the value of OptiTrack’s products in the manufacturing and robotics space by creating a ROS plugin that integrates Motive directly within the ROS environment. The results of this project will not only satisfy a market demand for Optitrack, but also allow their robotic clients to have more fully integrated 3D spaces, opening the doors for multiple robot interactions in the same space.
This project is a C++ plugin for ROS that will facilitate communication between it and OptiTrack’s own software Motive. The plugin is able to interpret global coordinates streamed from Motive and translate them into ROS data. Motive will track the robot that has our plugin installed, and then send the robot its global coordinates, as well as any other objects in the volume, where our plugin will interpret that data into something meaningful for ROS. The end user is able to install the plugin, and grab ROS formatted Motive data to integrate into their existing systems. This communication pipeline has been tested to be reliable and consistent, as it will be used in important industrial applications. Most importantly, this plugin makes communication quick and easy between Motive and ROS.
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| Attachment | Size |
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 2023.expoposter.54.pptx_.pdf | 1.39 MB |