Position tracking systems and methods for head-mounted display systems

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11933976-B2
Application number	US-202217954076-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 27, 2022
Priority date	Sep 28, 2021
Publication date	Mar 19, 2024
Grant date	Mar 19, 2024

Abstract

Systems and methods for tracking the position of one or more head-mounted display (HMD) system components of an HMD system. The HMD components may carry a plurality of angle sensitive detectors or other types of detectors. The HMD system may be operative to detect corrupted position tracking samples, allowing such samples to be ignored, thereby improving the position tracking process. Control circuitry causes light sources to emit light according a specified pattern, and receives sensor data from the plurality of detectors. Control circuitry may process the sensor data, for example using machine learning or other techniques, to track a position of one or more HMD components.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A head-mounted display system, comprising:
a first head-mounted display system component;
a plurality of angle sensitive detectors carried by the first head-mounted display system component, in operation, each of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors captures sensor data indicative of an angle of arrival of light emitted from one or more light sources;
a second head-mounted display system component that includes one or more light sources; and
control circuitry operative to:
cause the one or more light sources to emit light;
receive sensor data from one or more of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors, the sensor data comprising a plurality of sensor data samples;
process the received sensor data, including identification of one or more corrupted sensor data samples, each of the one or more corrupted sensor data samples comprising a sensor data sample from one of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors identified as likely not representing light that has been directly received by the one of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors from the one or more light sources; and
track a position of the second head-mounted display system component based at least in part on the processing of the received sensor data.

2. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein, to track the position of the second head-mounted display system component, the control circuitry ignores the corrupted sensor data samples.

3. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein the identification of the one or more corrupted sensor data samples is based at least in part on a known geometry of at least one of the first and second head-mounted display system components.

4. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein the identification of the one or more corrupted sensor data samples is based at least in part on one or more of:
a past position or orientation of at least one of the first and second head-mounted display system components;
a present position or orientation of at least one of the first and second head-mounted display system components; or
a predicted future position or orientation of at least one of the first and second head-mounted display system components.

5. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein the identification of the one or more corrupted sensor data samples comprises utilizing at least one projection model of the first head-mounted display system component or the second head-mounted display system component to determine which of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors are likely to have not directly received light from the one or more of the plurality of light sources.

6. The head-mounted display system of claim 5 wherein utilizing at least one projection model comprises comparing the sensor data samples to the at least one projection model, and identifying the sensor data samples that do not match the at least one projection model as corrupted sensor data samples.

7. The head-mounted display system of claim 6 wherein identifying the sensor data samples that do not match the at least one projection model as corrupted sensor data samples comprises identifying the sensor data samples that do not match the at least one projection model within a defined threshold as corrupted sensor data samples.

8. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 , further comprising disabling one or more of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors associated with the corrupted sensor data samples for a number of samples or a period of time.

9. The head-mounted display system of claim 8 wherein the number of samples or the period of time is selectively varied based on movement of at least one of the first head-mounted display system component or the second head-mounted display system component.

10. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein the second head-mounted display system component comprises a head-mounted display device wearable on the head of the user or a hand-held controller.

11. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein each of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors comprises one of a photodiode detector or a position sensitive detector.

12. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein each of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors comprises a photodiode detector having at least four cells.

13. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein the first head-mounted display system component comprises one of a head-mounted display device, a controller, or a base station, and the second head-mounted display system component comprises another of a head-mounted display device, a controller, or a base station.

14. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein at least one of the first head-mounted display system component or the second head-mounted display system component comprises a component that is fixed at a location proximate an environment in which the head-mounted display system is operated.

15. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 , further comprising a scatter detector that captures scatter detector data indicative of whether light received at one or more of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors has been reflected or scattered prior to arrival at the one or more of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors, wherein the scatter detector data is used in the identification of the one or more corrupted sensor data samples.

16. The head-mounted display system of claim 15 wherein the control circuitry processes the scatter detector data to identify the one or more corrupted sensor data samples, and ignores the corrupted sensor data samples during the tracking of the position of the second head-mounted display system component.

17. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 , further comprising a plurality of scatter detectors, each of the scatter detectors captures scatter detector data indicative of whether light received at one or more of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors has been reflected or scattered prior to arrival at one or more of the plurality of angle sensitive detectors, wherein the scatter detector data is used in the identification of the one or more corrupted sensor data samples.

18. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein, to process the received sensor data, the control circuitry provides the received sensor data as input to a trained machine learning model.

19. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein, in operation, the control circuitry causes the one or more light sources to emit light using multiplexing.

20. The head-mounted display system of claim 19 wherein the multiplexing includes at least one of time multiplexing, wavelength multiplexing, frequency multiplexing, or polarization multiplexing.

21. The head-mounted display system of claim 1 wherein, in operation, the control circuitry causes the one or more light sources to emit light using at least one of wavelength division multiple access (WDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), code division multiple access (CDMA), or orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA).

Assignees

• Valve Corp

Inventors

• Fletcher Evan
• Mucha Jeffrey Walter
• Hudman Joshua Mark
• Yates Alan
• Stoll Gordon Wayne
• Leinbaugh Jeffrey George
• Lohr Charles

Classifications

• G06F3/011

  Arrangements for interaction with the human body, e.g. for user immersion in virtual reality (blind teaching G09B21/00) · CPC title

• G02B2027/0138

  comprising image capture systems, e.g. camera · CPC title

• G02B27/0172

  characterised by optical features · CPC title

• G06F3/0304

  Detection arrangements using opto-electronic means (constructional details of pointing devices not related to the detection arrangement using opto-electronic means G06F3/033; optical digitisers G06F3/042) · CPC title

• G06F3/012

  Head tracking input arrangements · CPC title