Vision-based human-computer interaction using laser pointer

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Bilgisayar Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2003

Öğrenci: İBRAHİM AYKUT ERDEM

Danışman: MEHMET VOLKAN ATALAY

Özet:

By the availability of today̕s inexpensive powerful hardware, it becomes possible to design real-time computer vision systems even in personal computers. Therefore, computer vision becomes a powerful tool for human-computer interaction (HCI). In this study, three different vision-based HCI systems are described. As in all vision-based HCI systems, the developed systems requires a camera (a webcam) to monitor the actions of the users. For pointing tasks, laser pointer is used as the pointing device. The first system is Vision-Based Keyboard System. In this system, the keyboard is a passive device. Therefore, it can be made up of any material having a keyboard layout image. The web camera is placed to see the entire keyboard image and captures the movement of the laser beam. The user enters a character to the computer by covering the corresponding character region in the keyboard layout image with the laser pointer. Additionally, this keyboard system can be easily adapted for disabled people who have little or no control of their hands to use a keyboard. The disabled user can attach a laser pointer to an eyeglass and control the beam of the laser pointer by only moving his/her head. For the same class of disabled people, Vision-Based Mouse System is also developed. By using the same setup used in the previous keyboard system, this system provides the users to control mouse cursor and actions. The last system is Vision-Based Continuous Graffiti1-like Text Entry System. The user sketches characters in a GraffitiTM-like alphabet in a continuous manner on a flat surface using a laser pointer. The beam of the laser pointer is tracked during the image sequences captured by a camera and the corresponding written word is recognized from the extracted trace of the laser beam.