Study of HMD Tracking Systems Accuracy Applied to Short Head Displacements

The aim of this experiment was to characterize and compare the tracking systems of 5 HMDs (Microsoft Hololens 2; Vive Pro 2; Vive Focus 3; Varjo XR-3 with Vive lighthouse; Varjo XR-3 in standalone mode) on short distance displacements (max 50cm) for phygital applications. A UR5 robotic arm was used to move HMDs along square and round trajectories, at slow speeds, high speeds, and variable speeds. To study the accuracy of HMDs, their position data were compared to position data recorded by an external robust passive infrared tracking system which serves as a groundtruth. The results shown that the Varjo XR-3 has the best accuracy with an average error of 0.23 cm. The HMD with the worst accuracy is the Vive Pro 2 with an average error of 1.24 cm, followed by the Hololens 2, the Vive Focus 3 and the Varjo XR-3 SLAM with an average error of 1.22 cm, 0.58 cm, and 0.54 cm respectively. The analysis of the results shown that in the case of phygital applications in driving cockpits with a high demand of accuracy (up to 1mm), the Varjo XR-3 with Vive lighthouse or other optical tracking systems is a good solution. In the case of larger scale phygital applications such as vehicle exterior reviews, which require larger movements and lower levels of accuracy (up to 1cm), standalone HMDs such as the Vive Focus 3 are more beneficial