HeatWave: thermal imaging for surface user interaction

We present HeatWave, a system that uses digital thermal imaging cameras to detect, track, and support user interaction on arbitrary surfaces. Thermal sensing has had limited examination in the HCI research community and is generally under-explored outside of law enforcement and energy auditing applications. In this paper, we examine the role of thermal imaging as a new sensing solution for enhancing user surface interaction. In particular, we demonstrate how thermal imaging and existing computer vision techniques can make segmenting and detecting routine interaction techniques possible in real-time and complement or simplify algorithms for traditional RGB and depth cameras. Example interactions include (1) distinguishing surface touch or target selection from hovering above surface, (2) shape-based gestures similar to ink strokes, (3) pressure based gesturing, and (4) multifinger surface-based gestures. We close by discussing the practicality of thermal sensing for naturalistic user i...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Eric Larson, Gabe Cohn, Sidhant Gupta, Xiaofeng Ren, Beverly Harrison, Dieter Fox, Shwetak Patel
• Keywords: CHI 2011, Computer Vision Techniques, Human Computer Interaction, Pattern Recognition Applications, Thermal Imaging Cameras