University of HamburgFaculty EPBDepartment PsychologyGeneral PsychologyDFG International Graduate Research Group CINACSLandesexzellenzcluster neurodaptDFG Research Unit Perception and Action
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University of Hamburg > Faculty EPB > Department Psychology > General Psychology > Prof. Dr. V. Franz 
The Optotrak Toolbox
The following is supplementary information for the workshop Motor Control for Vision
Scientists which was held from January 7-11, 2004 in Lunteren, NL
as part of the EU-funded program Perception for Recognition and action
(PRA).The Optotrak Toolbox: Control your Optotrak from within Matlab.Volker H. Franz, University of Hamburg, GermanyThe Optotrak 3020 (Northern Digital Inc.) is a widely used and highly accurate 3D motion and position measurement system. Traditionally, it is controlled using an interface in the C-programming language. Recently, I wrote a toolbox which allows to control the Optotrak from within Matlab. This has a number of advantages: (a) Matlab provides a flexible environment for high level mathematics, much more versatile than C. This is advantageous for the processing of the 3D data produced by the Optotrak. (b) There exist already a number of Matlab toolboxes for psychophysical experiments. Most importantly the Psychophysics Toolbox (mainly for stimulus presentation) and the Eyelink Toolbox (controlling the SR-Research Eyelink Eyetracker). The Optotrak Toolbox can be used to integrate the Optotrak with these other research tools. The Optotrak Toolbox is currently tested under Windows XP and Linux.Sample programsHere, you can find some sample programs for the Optotrak Toolbox: Each sample is a 1-to-1 translation of one of the sample C-programs which are shipped with the Optotrak APIDownloadIf you are interested in the Optotrak Toolbox, I will be happy to send you a copy by email. Currently, the Optotrak Toolbox is still a bit in the alpha-state, but it will hopefully soon be ready to be published here.Reference / citationIf you use the Optotrak Toolbox for a scientific paper, please consider citing it. For example like this:Movement recording was controlled with the Optotrak Toolbox by V. H. Franz (http://webapp6.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/allpsy/vf/OptotrakToolbox) within Matlab (Mathworks, Natick, MA, USA). |
