In situ active marker generation for markerless tracking on featureless surfaces using persistent luminescence

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Optical Engineering
• Robotics

Background:

• Markerless tracking is challenging for featureless surfaces.
• Existing methods often fail on textureless materials.
• Persistent luminescence offers a potential solution for active marker generation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a markerless tracking method for featureless surfaces.
• To utilize persistent luminescence for dynamic marker generation.
• To evaluate the method's performance on various common materials.

Main Methods:

• UV laser irradiation to induce persistent luminescence on target surfaces.
• Characterization of luminescence spectra and detection limits for ten materials.
• Centroid tracking using Otsu's binarization and phase correlation for velocity estimation.
• Detection based on a 3-sigma criterion.

Main Results:

• Successful tracking demonstrated on wood, paper, and fabric.
• Achieved error rates below 10% at speeds of 40 and 80 mm/s.
• Outperformed feature-point-based methods on textureless samples.

Conclusions:

• The proposed persistent luminescence tracking method is effective for featureless surfaces.
• The technique is suitable for low-light or controlled environments.
• Offers a viable alternative to traditional feature-based tracking methods.