An Evaluation of Three Distance Measurement Technologies for Flying Light Specks

TL;DR

This paper compares three distance measurement technologies—UWB, IR, and ultrasonic—for flying light specks, highlighting their accuracy and calibration needs to enable effective swarm localization for metaverse applications.

Contribution

It provides an empirical evaluation of three sensors' accuracy in measuring short distances for FLS swarm localization, informing design choices for metaverse illumination.

Findings

Only one sensor measures 1 cm distances accurately

Calibration affects sensor accuracy

UWB sensor shows high precision at small distances

Abstract

This study evaluates the accuracy of three different types of time-of-flight sensors to measure distance. We envision the possible use of these sensors to localize swarms of flying light specks (FLSs) to illuminate objects and avatars of a metaverse. An FLS is a miniature-sized drone configured with RGB light sources. It is unable to illuminate a point cloud by itself. However, the inter-FLS relationship effect of an organizational framework will compensate for the simplicity of each individual FLS, enabling a swarm of cooperating FLSs to illuminate complex shapes and render haptic interactions. Distance between FLSs is an important criterion of the inter-FLS relationship. We consider sensors that use radio frequency (UWB), infrared light (IR), and sound (ultrasonic) to quantify this metric. Obtained results show only one sensor is able to measure distances as small as 1 cm with a high accuracy. A sensor may require a calibration process that impacts its accuracy in measuring distance.