Tag: project

Device of the Week 3: Project Soli – Controlling devices using hand gestures

Project Soli: Controlling devices using hand gestures

It is a gesture sensing technology by Google ATAP (Advanced Technology And Project group) for human-computer interaction. It uses miniature radar technology with sensors that will keep track of gestures made by human hands and fingers. The sensors track these gestures at high speed with detailed accuracy. It allows a rich variety of interaction. For example, the sliding of thumb would indicate the action of scrolling and tapping of thumb would indicate selecting of objects. Such interactive actions can be relevant in areas such as computer gaming and controlling of household appliances. It has the potential to move the users away from physical controllers and allows them to interact with the technological environment using gestures performed by their hands and fingers.

Product Visualisation

Pros and Cons of the Device

Pros

1. This technology gives people the ability to move away from the use of controllers or any physical gadgets which could lead to many possibilities. It could have a huge impact on areas such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). It will allow users to have a greater immersive experience as they are free from holding onto any physical inputs.

2. The physical representation of the technology is tiny. (See attached photos as reference.) This makes it potentially relevant to be integrated into technological wearable devices such as smartwatch and smartphone. With its small physical size, it can also be embedded into non-wearables devices or even daily household objects.

Cons

1. Gestures made by hands and fingers of different individuals are organically different. It will be a challenge for Soli to determine the intentions of the different gestures made by different individuals. It should also take into consideration users with hand and/or finger disability.

2. The experience of using physical mediums such as controllers for interaction had to be around for a long period of time. The implementation of Soli technology will means the absence of physical means in our interaction with the technological environment. As this is still a new developing technology, its effect on the experience of interaction for the users is still unknown and can only be realized in the long run.

Suggestion for alternate use and/or modification

Though Soli is still at an experimental stage of its development, its size and flexibility of the technology offer plenty of possibilities. I believe as time and technology progress, it will potentially be integrated into our technological environment with its favorable interactive characteristics. With ATAP’s plan of offering development kit for developers, it really will be up to the collective effort of ATAP and the developers to help transform the idea into a finalized product and into our home.

Kaboom! Concept development and prototyping (Fabian and Zhou Yang)

Project description:

The idea is inspired by the traditional game catching. The game will consists of two teams preferably equal number of people on both sides. Each side will be wearing slippers with LED lights of different colors to differentiate from the other team. (Red and Blue) The objective of the game is to turn the LED lights of the opposite team into the other color. (Red to blue or vice versa.) They can do it by attempting to position their LED light in front of the light sensors placed at the back of the slippers players are all wearing. The game ends when one side of the team had all their members’ LED light changed color.

Areas of changes/improvements in concept:

Since the start of the development process we had make the following changes /improvements to the prototype:

  1. We had changed the medium from shoes to slippers to create a more comical image of our prototype since it is designed for a game.
  2. Change in the sensors was also made as we realized the player catching another player has the tendency to “kill” himself/herself if he/she stomps his/her feet as it might trigger his/her own LED light. Therefore, light sensors are used instead of the players.
  3. The format of the game is changed as well. Before this, the game consisted of catch, healer and the rest of the players. However, we realized the structure of the game is not workable. For example, what if the catcher catch another player and he/she turns into the catcher. Does that particular person start catching people? If so how does the healer “heal” him/her. The conflict in gameplay caused us to change the gameplay into two teams of players. The two teams will try to change the color of the LED light of the opposite team.
  4. There will be a timing the led lights can be lighted up. It will be triggered preferably by a button the player can operate. It will have a cool down period. Therefore, the player needs to time when he/she wants to light his/her LED light when approaching a player from the opposite team. If time incorrectly, he/she will be at a vulnerable position to be “attacked” by a player(s) from the opposite team.

Process:

Testing out the blue and red LED lights.

Fixing the LED lights onto the slippers for testing.

Assembling the arduino set up on the slippers.

Major issues:

We faced the following problems while prototyping:

1. The LED lights were unstable. They were showing random colors and blinking in random manners.

2. The LED lights were not responsive when we interacted with it.

These are some of the issues we faced while building our prototype. After troubleshooting, we realized most of the problems were solved after we change some of the parts as they are aging and thus malfunctioning.

3. Due to time constraints and our lack of knowledge and practice in Arduino we could not get the light sensors to work. In the end, we created a button function for the set up to mimic the triggering of the LED lights when the light sensor is activated.

References:

https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Control-an-RGB-LED-Strip-Arduino-Tutorial/

https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/gol73/innovation-lab-5-push-button-rgb-led-color-change-6f4453

Our code:

Project testing:

From the video, the LED lights are changing colors through the press of buttons to mimic the triggering of light sensors which will result in color change. However, we are having difficulty to make the LED lights response in a consistent manner.