Gesture-based universal optical remote control: Concept, reconstruction principle and recognition results

The concept of an easy-to-use optical remote control and results of gesture reconstruction and recognition are presented. The hand-held universal remote control (“SmartPointer”) has a pencil-like shape and emits infrared (IR) light with a particular spatial pattern. A cost-effective IR-sensitive receiver in the vicinity of the devices to be remotely controlled records the spatio-temporal intensity changes while a gesture is being carried out. From these intensity changes in the receiver plane, the trajectory of the pattern is calculated and the gesture reconstructed. For recognition purposes, the trajectories are appropriately scaled in size, centered and then transformed into representations based on the trajectories' arc lengths to eliminate the different time scaling of rapidly and slowly conducted gestures. This approach also helps eliminate intra- and interpersonal trajectory variabilities which might be large for the same intended gesture. At present, the gesture test set comprises 24 intuitive gestures (classes) including numerals and several characters for the control of basic device functions. Results are derived from simulations and experiments carried out with 36 test persons aged from 7 to 85 years. Over all 24 gestures, an average recognition rate (true positive rate, TPR) of 93.8 % (with 14 gestures showing a TPR > 96 %) and an average positive predictive value (PPV) of 94.3% (with 12 gestures showing a PPV >96%) has been achieved so far.