Whole Body and Gestural Ineteraction
in Immersive Environments
The objective of this project is to develop full-body and hand gesture
based user interaction within immersive environments
and on large displays using cameras. Think Minority Report,
yet with markerless tracking. The idea is to track the
users motion to determine what type of interaction he/she
expects from the software/immersive environments running
on these large displays. The area of camera based tracking
is a widely researched one and there are many algorithms/research
papers, yet surprisingly few usable and functional applications.
The project uses fast IR cameras to track the users hands and head in 3D. The
inputs are fed to software driving large displays to
let the users interact with the display while standing
in front of the screens, and within the immersive environment.
The system utilizes stereo-vision to track users' head
and hand positions and vectors within a 3D space.
This
is an ongoing research project. Key collaborators include
Todd Margolis, Alex S. Horn, Raj Singh, and Dr. Javier
Girardo and students from the ECE 191 course. We are
grateful to Dr. Pankaj Das and Professor Charles Tu for
their generous support. And we are especially thankful
for the talented students that have collaborated with
us on this project: Tommy Chheng, Tom Cassey, Jeffrey
Lien, David Lai, Pavel Shekhtmeyster, Ed Johnson, Chris
Young, and Adam Nuhaily.
Ruth West
An interdisciplinary artist-researcher working with digital media and interactive technologies.