A prototype of a gestural UI for people with disabilities to control autonomous buildings

Gesture control technology applications in ehealth

The customer

The Sustainable Infrastructure Cluster is a cooperative initiative of dozens of companies, universities, research institutes and business support institutions that develop, deploy and bring to market innovative technologies in the field of construction. The Institute of Consulting Co. is a coordinator of this initiative. It is a business organization that since 1996 has worked to ensure sustainable development of the Polish economy by supporting innovative and enterprise activity. Among the members of the Cluster are entrepreneurs (including the Krakow Technology Park) and universities (including Jagiellonian University and AGH). The Cluster also promotes ecological construction and autonomous housing.

The problem

The ultimate goal of the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) initiative is research and development to improve the quality of life of older people and people with disabilities through the use of ICT. With the development of autonomous buildings, a need to create user interfaces that are well-adapted to their needs arose. One of these interfaces, a gestural interface, greatly facilitates the functioning of persons with disabilities with gesture control technology.

The solution

The project aimed to carry out industrial research efforts to acquire new knowledge and skills in the use of open solutions for traffic analysis, which in collaboration with commercially available 3D recording devices would allow us to design a gestural control interface. At first we established a list of optimal gestures and performed a detailed analysis of the available motion recognition algorithms. The research also allowed us to evaluate available 3D recording devices.

The second part of the project was developmental; its goal was to design a prototype that would allow the detailed analysis of desired methods for gesture recognition. The results have enabled an objective assessment of the various hardware and software solutions for BMS-class systems and the possibility of using them for people with disabilities. In addition, micro-type hardware platforms such as Intel Galileo, Intel Edison and RaspberryPi were analyzed to determine whether they could or could not run fully operational gesture recognition software.

Results

The skills and knowledge we gained have helped us to prepare guidelines for developing a commercial gesture control technology solution for a gestural user interface. The result can be used in BMS-class systems or in other systems facilitating the lives of the elderly and disabled.

 
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Sensinum Team
Sensinum Team

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