The Auracle team presented an innovative new technique for interacting with wearable devices, during the UIST conference last week.
Abstract: We present Pyro, a micro thumb-tip gesture recognition technique based on thermal infrared signals radiating from the fingers. Pyro uses a compact, low-power passive sensor, making it suitable for wearable and mobile applications. To demonstrate the feasibility of Pyro, we developed a self-contained prototype consisting of the infrared pyroelectric sensor, a custom sensing circuit, and software for signal processing and machine learning. A ten-participant user study yielded a 93.9% cross-validation accuracy and 84.9% leave-one-session-out accuracy on six thumb-tip gestures. Subsequent lab studies demonstrated Pyro’s robustness to varying light conditions, hand temperatures, and background motion. We conclude by discussing the insights we gained from this work and future research questions.
Read the full paper in ACM digital library:
J. Gong, Y. Zhang, X. Zhou, and X.-D. Yang, “Pyro: Thumb-Tip gesture recognition using pyroelectric infrared sensing,” in Proceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST). ACM Press, Oct. 2017, pp. 553-563. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3126594.3126615
Watch the video:
Auracle – wearable technology for the study of eating behavior 