If you wear a smartwatch, you know how limiting it is to type it on or otherwise operate it. Now European researchers have developed an input method that uses a depth camera (similar to the Kinect game controller) to track fingertip touch and location on the back of the hand or in mid-air, allowing for precision control.

The researchers have created a prototype called “WatchSense,” worn on the user’s arm. It captures the movements of the thumb and index finger on the back of the hand or in the space above it. It would also work with smartphones, smart TVs, and virtual-reality or augmented reality devices, explains Srinath Sridhar, a researcher in the Graphics, Vision and Video group at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics.

KurzweilAI has covered a variety of attempts to use depth cameras for controlling devices, but developers have been plagued with the lack of precise control with current camera devices and software.

The new software, based on machine learning, recognizes the exact positions of the thumb and index finger in the 3D image from the depth sensor, says Sridhar, identifying specific fingers and dealing with the unevenness of the back of the hand and the fact that fingers can occlude each other when they are moved.

“The currently available depth sensors do not fit inside a smartwatch, but from the trend it’s clear that in the near future, smaller depth sensors will be integrated into smartwatches,” Sridhar says.

The researchers, which include Christian Theobalt, head of the Graphics, Vision and Video group at MPI, Anders Markussen and Sebastian Boring at the University of Copenhagen, and Antti Oulasvirta at Aalto University in Finland, will present WatchSense at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Denver (May 6–11, 2017). Their open-access paper is also available.



Srinath Sridhar et al. | WatchSense: On- and Above-Skin Input Sensing through a Wearable Depth Sensor

Abstract of WatchSense: On- and Above-Skin Input Sensing through a Wearable Depth Sensor

This paper contributes a novel sensing approach to support on- and above-skin finger input for interaction on the move. WatchSense uses a depth sensor embedded in a wearable device to expand the input space to neighboring areas of skin and the space above it. Our approach addresses challenging camera-based tracking conditions, such as oblique viewing angles and occlusions. It can accurately detect fingertips, their locations, and whether they are touching the skin or hovering above it. It extends previous work that supported either mid-air or multitouch input by simultaneously supporting both. We demonstrate feasibility with a compact, wearable prototype attached to a user’s forearm (simulating an integrated depth sensor). Our prototype—which runs in real-time on consumer mobile devices—enables a 3D input space on the back of the hand. We evaluated the accuracy and robustness of the approach in a user study. We also show how WatchSense increases the expressiveness of input by interweaving mid-air and multitouch for several interactive applications.