The sound of one hand: a wrist-mounted bio-acoustic fingertip gesture interface

Two hundred and fifty years ago the Japanese Zen master Hakuin asked the question, "What is the Sound of the Single Hand?" This koan has long served as an aid to meditation but it also describes our new interaction technique. We discovered that gentle fingertip gestures such as tapping, rubbing, and flicking make quiet sounds that travel by bone conduction throughout the hand. A small wristbandmounted contact microphone can reliably and inexpensively sense these sounds. We harnessed this "sound in the hand" phenomenon to build a wristband-mounted bioacoustic fingertip gesture interface. The bio-acoustic interface recognizes some common gestures that state-of-the-art glove and image-processing techniques capture but in a smaller, mobile package. Keywords Human-computer interaction, gestural interfaces, gestures, fingers, wrist, acoustics, mobile devices.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Brian Amento, William C. Hill, Loren G. Terveen
• Keywords: Bioacoustic Fingertip Gesture, CHI 2002, Gentle Fingertip Gestures, Human Computer Interaction, Keywords Human-Computer Interaction