Google’s New WorldSense Tracking

Image credit: Google

At Google’s I/O conference a smattering of cool virtual reality announcements was made. There were announcements about new rendering technology (Seurat), new stand-alone virtual reality headsets, artificial intelligence, and more. Announcements regarding stand-alone virtual reality headsets soon to be released by HTC and Lenovo were, in my opinion, the most exciting. With the announcement of these headsets, a bunch of details regarding the new technologies that power these headsets was also provided. Because these headsets are all-in-one headsets, a new exciting form of tracking tech called WorldSense is being developed. If Google is successful in their implementation, WorldSense could radically shift the VR market towards high quality portable virtual reality headsets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztJIxxCwJaE

WorldSense

As I mentioned, Google’s new VR headsets are fully all-in-one stand-alone portable headsets. Being wireless and self-contained provides a huge number of advantages over nasty-wired headsets. That said, there are also some drawbacks mainly revolving around positional tracking that Google had to consider when developing the new headsets. These drawbacks most likely forced Google to develop their new WorldSense tracking platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJD34uGPQf8

Tracking Issues

The biggest drawback to all-in-one headsets is that they can not rely on traditional tracking methods. This is because traditional tracking methods use wired motion sensors that are either video or laser based. By creating all-in-one headsets, of course, these wired solutions will not be able to physically connect to Google’s new headsets. Even if such tracking systems were made wireless, there would be a few issues that could not be surpassed easily.

First of all, if such trackers were able to communicate wirelessly with these new headsets, the transmission standards would not be fast enough to provide lag-free experiences. In other words, there would be a perceptible amount of lag introduced because current wireless standards are just not fast enough to transmit data that matches the speed of human perception. Second, even if these sensors and their wireless connectivity were fast enough, adding trackers would eliminate the fully portable applications that Google is pitching. These headsets are meant to be used as mobile VR units.

Solving the Problems

WorldSense was created to surpass conventional tracking issues while also allowing headset portability and use in a variety of environments. Google’s new augmented reality Field Trips App is a perfect example of this new approach. Google wants people to go out and use their virtual reality headsets in a variety of locations to expanding virtual reality use beyond the home environment.

Image credit: Google

How does it work?

WorldSense was born out of a mixture of Google technologies including Google Glass and Project Tango. Instead of using lasers or sensors like Intel’s Project Alloy, Google wields its considerable object recognition powers to ascertain the orientation and movement of a VR headset. Two cameras on the headset will continually take in and process a video feed of the surrounding environment while recognizing and tracking objects as they move. Using the movement of tracked objects, the headset can calculate the position of the viewer with the combined data that comes from the standard accelerometer data that tracks the user’s head orientation.

Journalists that have actually tried out WorldSense at Google’s event say that this system works remarkably well. After the system acclimates to objects in the room, the tracked head movements seem almost as precise as conventional laser trackers. All in all, Google’s new virtual reality technology is making some brave new strides that will probably make virtual reality headsets quite a bit more portable and competitive over the next few years.