Kinect Mouse Tracker

In september 2018 I got the opportunity to do a 4-week internship with Karl Farrow's lab at NERF (Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders). The main focus of Farrow Lab is "Dissecting the lines of communication connecting the eye with behaviour". To achieve this the lab uses several behavioural set-ups. Among these is the one Anna Chrzanowska uses in her PhD research, with monitors on multiple sides of an open pen. See the first prototype I helped build below.

To collect experimental data and/or change visual stimulation patterns in real-time it is necessary to know the mouse's position in the pen. That's why a Microsoft Kinect was mounted under the pen, to act as an infrared depth sensor. The data this sensor outputs is then processed by the application, that I developed: Kinect Mouse Tracker. Written in C++, this app uses the OpenCV computer vision library to determine and record the mouse's postion with a delay of only ~50ms.