Wearable marker for passive interaction

A wearable head-mounted display (HMD) comprising:

• means for detecting infrared (IR) radiation reflected from an IR reflective surface on a hand-wearable item, wherein the IR reflective surface is in the form of a particular surface pattern and is substantially optically invisible;
• means for decoding the particular surface pattern from the detected IR radiation to obtain an item identifier;
• means for determining that the item identifier matches a predetermined identifier associated with the wearable HMD;
• and
• means for responding to determining that the item identifier matches the predetermined identifier by measuring position and motion of the particular surface pattern relative to the wearable HMD via the detected IR radiation, in order to track position and motion of the hand-wearable item relative to the wearable HMD.

A nontransitory computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon that, upon execution by one or more processors of a wearable head-mounted display (HMD), cause the wearable HMD to carry out functions comprising:

• detecting infrared (IR) radiation reflected from an IR reflective surface on a hand-wearable item, wherein the IR reflective surface is in the form of a particular surface pattern and is substantially optically invisible;
• decoding the particular surface pattern from the detected IR radiation to obtain an item identifier;
• determining that the item identifier matches a predetermined identifier associated with the wearable HMD;
• and
• responsive to determining that the item identifier matches the predetermined identifier, tracking position and motion of the hand-wearable item relative to the wearable HMD by measuring position and motion of the particular surface pattern relative to the wearable HMD via the detected IR radiation.