Electromagnetic Tracking Using Modular, Tiled Field Generators

Electromagnetic tracking (EMT) systems play an important role in medicine, robotics, and virtual reality applications by providing accurate position and orientation referencing within a fixed volume around a magnetic field generator. Advances in sensor technology provide increasingly small, lightweight sensors capable of being integrated into hand-held devices for medical simulation, gaming, and image-guided surgery. The need for customizable tracking volumes becomes of interest as the uptake of EMT technology increases. This paper proposes a new method of creating custom tracking volumes from multiple planar field generators. A monolithic, low-cost printed circuit board design allows for tiling of multiple generators to create a larger tracking volume. Experiments were performed with two generators at different angles. Successful tracking is demonstrated with increased positional accuracy observed when transmitters are inclined with respect to one another. Horizontal tiling configurations are most accurate when a common edge is shared between adjacent field generators.