MEgATrack: monochrome egocentric articulated hand-tracking for virtual reality

Shangchen Han, Beibei Liu, Randi Cabezas, Christopher D. Twigg, Peizhao Zhang, Jeff Petkau, Tsz-Ho Yu, Chun-Jung Tai, Muzaffer Akbay, Zheng Wang, Asaf Nitzan, Gang Dong, Yuting Ye, Lingling Tao, Chengde Wan, Robert Wang

Abstract: We present a system for real-time hand-tracking to drive virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) experiences. Using four fisheye monochrome cameras, our system generates accurate and low-jitter 3D hand motion across a large working volume for a diverse set of users. We achieve this by proposing neural network architectures for detecting hands and estimating hand keypoint locations. Our hand detection network robustly handles a variety of real world environments. The keypoint estimation network leverages tracking history to produce spatially and temporally consistent poses. We design scalable, semi-automated mechanisms to collect a large and diverse set of ground truth data using a combination of manual annotation and automated tracking. Additionally, we introduce a detection-by-tracking method that increases smoothness while reducing the computational cost; the optimized system runs at 60Hz on PC and 30Hz on a mobile processor. Together, these contributions yield a practical system for capturing a user's hands and is the default feature on the Oculus Quest VR headset powering input and social presence.