Measurement Accuracy of the HTC VIVE Tracker 3.0 Compared to Vicon System for Generating Valid Positional Feedback in Virtual Reality

For realistic and reliable full-body visualization in virtual reality, the HTC VIVE Tracker could be an alternative to highly complex and cost- and effort-intensive motion capture systems such as Vicon. Due to its lighter weight and smaller dimensions, the latest generation of trackers is proving to be very promising for capturing human movements. The aim of this study was to investigate the accuracy of the HTC VIVE Tracker 3.0 compared to the gold-standard Vicon for different arrangements of the base stations and various velocities during an athletic movement. Therefore, the position data from three trackers attached to the hip, knee and ankle of one sporty participant were recorded while riding a bicycle ergometer at different pedaling frequencies and different base station arrangements. As parameters for the measurement accuracy, the trajectories of the linear motion of the knee and the circular motion of the ankle were compared between VIVE and Vicon by calculating the spatial distance from the raw data at each point in time. Both the pedaling frequency and the arrangement of the base stations significantly affected the measurement accuracy, with the lowest pedaling frequency of 80 rpm and the rectangular arrangement recommended by the manufacturer showing the smallest spatial differences of 10.4 mm ± 4.5 mm at the knee and 11.3 mm ± 5.1 mm at the ankle. As the pedaling frequency increased gradually (120 rpm and 160 rpm), the measurement accuracy of the trackers per step decreased less at the knee (approximately 5 mm) than at the ankle (approximately 10 mm). In conclusion, the measurement accuracy for various athletic skills was high enough to enable the visualization of body limbs or the entire body using inverse kinematics in VR on the one hand and, on the other hand, to provide initial insights into the quality of certain techniques at lower speeds in sports science research. However, the VIVE trackers are not suitable for exact biomechanical analyses.