Tracking system calibration with minimal user input

A method of calculating a camera's field of view comprising:

• receiving image data of a sphere, the image data including an elliptical projection of the sphere onto an image plane of the camera;
• determining a position of the sphere in the image plane of the camera from the image data;
• computing a major axis and a minor axis of the elliptical projection;
• computing the camera's field of view based on the position of the sphere and a difference between the major axis and the minor axis;
• and
• using the field of view to track the sphere in three-dimensional space.

A computer readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by a processing system, cause the processing system to perform a method comprising:

• receiving a positional data of a tracked object from device positional sensor as the object is moved through a rich motion path;
• receiving inertial data corresponding to the tracked object by as the tracked object is moved through the rich motion path;
• converting the positional data to a three-dimensional coordinate system of the positional sensor;
• computing an acceleration of the tracked object in the three-dimensional coordinate system of the positional sensor;
• and
• reconciling the inertial data with the computed acceleration.

A tracking system, comprising:

• a tracked object that includes one or more inertial sensors, the tracked object to gather inertial data as the tracked object is moved through a rich motion path, and to transmit the inertial data to a computing device;
• device positional sensor to gather positional data of the tracked object as the object is moved through the rich motion path, and to transmit the positional data to the computing device;
• and
• the computing device, to receive the inertial data and the positional data, to convert the positional data to a three-dimensional coordinate system of the positional sensor, to compute an acceleration of the tracked object in the three-dimensional coordinate system of the positional sensor, and to reconcile the inertial data with the computed acceleration.

A tracking system, comprising:

• a sphere that includes one or more inertial sensors, the sphere having a known radius;
• a camera to gather image data of the sphere, the image data including an elliptical projection of the sphere onto an image plane of the camera, and to transmit the image data to a computing device;
• and
• the computing device, to receive the image data, to determine a position of the sphere in the image plane of the camera from the image data, to compute a major axis and a minor axis of the elliptical projection, to compute the camera's field of view based on the position of the sphere and a difference between the major axis and the minor axis, and to use the field of view to track the sphere in three-dimensional space.