GESTER
I did my PhD on the analysis hand gestures for implementation in a User Interface by conducting a cost/benefit analysis of various gestures in terms of classifiability and likelihood of mis-classifiability. This was in essence my PhD in Electronics. It involved statistical distance analysis, various statistical metrics and loads of matrices multiplications.... I had great fun doing it as I love maths!
Synopsis
The work involved first designing and testing an input device to track the hand action, hence me designing few data gloves. The first was resistance based (strain gauges) and was highly sensitive but fragile. It turned out the strain gauges and their connections should have been printed in the flesible PCB for the glove to be reliable. I then moved on to a second principle, based on hollow tube, LED and light dependent resistors (LDR). A sinple principle, in that the bending of the hollow tube would reduce the amount of light going from the LED at one end to the LDR at the other end.
 |
 |
| Strain Gauge Glove | Optic Sensors Glove |
The second part of the work was to select a set of gestures that are most common, and then conduct a cost/benefit analysis of their inclusion in a user interface, taking into account what reliability to expect with which and how many gestures.
 |
 |
| Gesture I | Gesture Stop |