Lincoln Wand
The Lincoln Wand, originally called the WAND, is the first ever 3D isomorphic interaction computer input device.[1]
It was developed by Larry Roberts at the MIT Lincoln Lab in 1966. It was an ultrasonic position-sensing device that tracked the x, y, and z coordinates of a pen-like wand in real time.
It did acoustic tracking based on time-of-flight. The wand used an ultrasonic signal and four microphones mounted at the corners of a rectangle. However Roy Kalawsky wrote that the Wand used four transmitters and one receiver and that the transmitters were pulsed in 10 ms intervals for a total cycle time of 40 ms (25 Hz) and that Roberts reported that the Wand had a static accuracy of 0.2 inches and resolution of about 0.2 inches.[2] The receiver was tuned to 50khz.
A film was made in the 1960s that shows the wand being used to construct and manipulate objects in 3-D perspective on a computer.
History[edit]
Before the Lincoln Wand, Larry Roberts invented computer vision to transcribe 2D drawings into a 3D computer model. After that, he sought for a better way to get a 3D object in a computer and arrived at the Lincoln Wand.
References[edit]
- ↑ Burton, Robert P.; Sutherland, Ivan E. (1974). "Twinkle box: a three-dimensional computer input device". ACM Press. p. 513. doi:10.1145/1500175.1500278. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1500175.1500278.
- ↑ Kalawsky, Roy S.. "The science of virtual reality and virtual environments : a technical, scientific and engineering reference on virtual environments". p. 149. https://search.worldcat.org//title/28760324.
- Roberts, Lawrence G. (1966). "The Lincoln WAND". ACM Press. doi:10.1145/1464291.1464317. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1464291.1464317.
- "Defense Technical Information Center". https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/AD0685285.
- https://www.xvrwiki.org/wiki/File:AD0643821.pdf
- Meyer, Kenneth; Applewhite, Hugh L.; Biocca, Frank A. (1992). "A Survey of Position Trackers". Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 1 (2): 173–200. doi:10.1162/pres.1992.1.2.173. https://direct.mit.edu/pvar/article/1/2/173-200/58768.