The Platform
The top picture shows me wearing the latest version of the wearable
hardware, which is also represented by the diagram. I collaborated
with the excellent robotics engineer Jeff Weber on
the physical design and construction (he also took the two pictures
of me wearing the system on this website), and with fellow graduate
student Eduardo
Torres-Jara on the custom circuit board for power
distribution. The backpack holds batteries that can power the system
for approximately seven hours, and a laptop that can process and
capture data, as well as communicate wirelessly with a computer
cluster. A firewire camera attached to a headband captures video
from the wearer's perspective. A kinematic model that describes the
configuration of the wearer's torso, upper-arm, forearm, and head is
estimated based on the output from the four orientation sensors. The
off-the-shelf orientation sensors from Intersense estimate absolute
orientation with respect to gravity and the earth's magnetic
field. One of the sensors is mounted to the backpack, while the
other three are worn on the head, the upper-arm, and the wrist.