FEATURED WANDS FOR CAMERA CALIBRATION AND AS A GESTURE BASED 3D INTERFACE DEVICE

Passive wands, tracked by one or more cameras, are used as user interface devices. The wands are inexpensive, and are a natural way for users to interact with devices such as large displays. Each wand may be used to specify a full 6 degrees of freedom, which can be helpful for manipulation of 3D applications. The wands may also be used to identify 3D world points, which is useful for multi-camera calibration, and for building 3D models of physical spaces. The described methods provide a more precise estimation of wand pose, and can be implemented with a single camera. Also described is a method for estimation wand pose using information available along a one dimensional ‘line scan’ within the image, which simplifies processing.