MOTT modular optical tool tracking framework enabling efficient benchmarking

Optical tool tracking is the process of determining the 6DoF pose of an object in real time using visual sensor streams and image processing algorithms. It enables spatial localization in applications such as robotics, medical imaging, augmented reality, and precision manufacturing. However, existing solutions often involve tight coupling between hardware and software, complicating the management and benchmarking of different tracking systems. This paper presents the Modular Optical Tool Tracking (MOTT) framework, a unified platform for implementing, integrating, and benchmarking optical tracking solutions. A requirement-based design approach was adopted, using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to systematically derive technical features and identify design drivers that guided the architecture of the framework. The resulting software framework standardizes the concept of an optical tracking method, featuring a flexible and extensible architecture based on object-oriented principles. Two marker-based tracking methods using an RGB camera as video source were evaluated through the developed framework. The presented case studies showcased the use of the framework for method implementation and comparison within a unified pipeline, reporting computational metrics such as frame rate, CPU and memory usage, and providing pose visualizations. The proposed framework enables standardized evaluation and benchmarking of optical tracking systems, and provides a foundation for future extensions involving non-optical tracking modalities and large-scale comparative studies. The implementation is openly available at https://github.com/tooltip-optical-tracking/mott-framework.