Pico Motion Tracker adds leg tracking to the Pico 4 Ultra, Pico 4 and Pico Neo 3.

Like Sony’s Mocopi, each Pico Motion Tracker has an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that includes a tiny accelerometer and gyroscope. But unlike other IMU trackers like Mocopi, Pico Motion Trackers also have 12 infrared LEDs each that are tracked by the headset for dual purposes.

First, they are used to enable a quick initial calibration where you simply stand still and look down. From then on, they are used to provide true 6DoF positional tracking when a tracker is in the field of view of one of the headset’s tracking cameras.

When not in view of a camera, the IMU feeds into a skeleton model to produce plausible (but imperfect) estimated leg positions based on the relative rotations and forces of each tracker. It’s an interesting hybrid approach we haven’t seen before for leg tracking, and should provide higher quality output than IMU-only trackers at a significantly lower cost than Vive trackers.

ByteDance claims an “average position error of 5 cm, an average angle error of only 6°, and an accuracy of no less than 98% in judging and restoring step actions” with a latency of less than 20 milliseconds.

Each tracker weighs just 27 grams, supposedly offers 25 hours of battery life, and charges via standard USB-C.

Pico Motion Trackers are available for pre-order in China for 400 yen per pair, which is just under $60, and will begin shipping on September 2, the same day as the new Pico 4 Ultra headset.

ByteDance says the trackers will be supported in PC VR apps such as VRChat via the Pico Connect PC VR streaming app, as well as in over 20 standalone VR games on China’s Pico Store.

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