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I'm intending to buy a 3 or more camera Optitrack FLEX V100 system for controlling a small autonomous helicopter indoors in 6-DOF. The helicopter is a rigid body. We will put the markers on the helicopter body. We are looking to feed the helicopter's 6-DOF position/orientation back into its navigation loop.

We can buy the point cloud software which I assume will stream the 3D points for each marker into a file. We are looking for robust rigid body software to use the API to output helicopter 6-DOF with minimum latency. It should handle marker change-overs as the helicopter rotates with markers appearing and disappearing from each camera's view.

Natural Motion's Rigid body software is scheduled for end-2007. We would be interested if you have or know of some code that can help us now (or we could be a Beta-tester for the Rigid body software?).

This sounds like a cool application! You are correct, the Point Cloud toolkit can write the tracking data into a CSV file, the data can also be accessed in real time with an application by using the Point Cloud COM interface.

We also appreciate your interest in the rigid body tracking software. We don't have a beta program for it yet, but we will definitely keep your request in mind. We don't know of any other rigid body software that is readily available, although some of our current Point Cloud customers have successfully implemented it on their own. If you haven't signed up for the OptiTrack newsletter yet, you might want to (front page of the OptiTrack site). Its a good way keep informed of product releases and announcements.