{"id":629925,"date":"2020-01-07T13:45:47","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T21:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-project&#038;p=629925"},"modified":"2026-04-03T11:50:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T18:50:37","slug":"wicapture","status":"publish","type":"msr-project","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/wicapture\/","title":{"rendered":"WiCapture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Immersive experiences like virtual reality require accurate tracking of the headset and other accessories like hand-motion controllers. WiCapture is a system that achieves sub-centimeter-level accuracy of virtual reality accessories using commodity WiFi devices.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>WiCapture does not require special hardware, it uses commodity APs that can be bought in retail stores.<\/li>\n<li>WiCapture is occlusion resistant, it continues to work even when the APs and headsets are occluded due to furniture or other objects in between.<\/li>\n<li>WiCapture has larger range and operates across rooms.<\/li>\n<li>It is insensitive to room illumination or texture and it can work in the dark. Further, headset complexity is minimal, all the headset needs is a standard WiFi chip.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, experiencing virtual reality (VR) is a cumbersome experience which either requires dedicated infrastructure like infrared cameras to track the headset and hand-motion controllers (e.g. Oculus Rift, HTC Vive), or provides only 3-DoF (Degrees of Freedom) tracking which severely limits the user experience (e.g. Samsung Gear VR). To truly enable VR everywhere, we need position tracking to be available as a ubiquitous service. This paper presents WiCapture, a novel approach which leverages commodity WiFi infrastructure, which is ubiquitous today, for tracking purposes. We prototype WiCapture using off-the-shelf WiFi radios and show that it achieves an accuracy of 0.88 cm compared to sophisticated infrared-based tracking systems like the Oculus, while providing much higher range, resistance to occlusion, ubiquity and ease of deployment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"research-area":[13562,13554,13547],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-629925","msr-project","type-msr-project","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-computer-vision","msr-research-area-human-computer-interaction","msr-research-area-systems-and-networking","msr-locale-en_us","msr-archive-status-complete"],"msr_project_start":"","related-publications":[629964],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-groups":[],"related-events":[],"related-opportunities":[],"related-posts":[],"related-articles":[],"tab-content":[{"id":0,"name":"Demo video","content":"[embed]https:\/\/youtu.be\/Qu-HuCk8guU[\/embed]"},{"id":1,"name":"Code and Data","content":"<a href=\"https:\/\/bitbucket.org\/mkotaru\/wicapturesourcecode\">Source-code<\/a>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/web.stanford.edu\/~mkotaru\/wicaptureData.zip\">Data<\/a>"}],"slides":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_impact_theme":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/629925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-project"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/629925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1167666,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/629925\/revisions\/1167666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=629925"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=629925"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=629925"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=629925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}