Operation system for home appliances with simple gestures at arbitrary position

In this paper, a novel system that remotely operates home appliances is proposed. The system is based on a command space associated with the operation of the home appliance. Thus, a user is able to control the system with simple hand gestures at an arbitrary position. In the system, a pseudo relative coordinate system which is a user-definable coordinate system is applied. The hand waving gesture is detected from the images acquired by multiple cameras installed in the room. Then, the position of hand waving gesture is calculated using the stereo measurement. Next, the pseudo relative coordinate system is defined according to the calculated position. Therefore, it is possible to operate home appliances freely at an arbitrary position chosen by the user. In addition, home appliances are operated using a hand positioning gesture that requires less operation time and less burden than a hand waving gesture. The hand positioning gesture is detected using the frame subtraction and the background subtraction. Experiments verify the operation accuracy and operation time for commands using the proposed system for detailed operations such as TV channel switching.