Wave good-bye to the TV remote control

16 July 2007

"IET Journal is first to publish outcome of research project."

Hand signals could soon replace remote controls for TVs, DVDs and other consumer electronics goods, research published in the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) Computer Vision Research Journal has revealed.

Dr. Prashan Premaratne from the University of Wollongong and Quang Nguyen from the Australian National University, Canberra, say their method of controlling consumer electronic goods via hand signals is ready for use.

The researchers devised seven gestures to control a TV and VCR and carried out a number of experiments under different lighting conditions and at different distances from the equipment. Their work also involved designing hardware and software to recognise the hand gestures and turn them into actions in real time.

Dr. Premaratne said: “We all rely on remote controls to manage an increasing number of items including TVs, set top boxes, DVDs and Hi-Fi’s and the range of goods will continue to increase. Apart from the frustration of sometimes mislaying the remote control just when you need it, they do tend to have different sets of commands which have to be mastered.

“People have tried to replace remote controls with voice recognition or glove-based devices but with mixed results. We set out to tackle the problem with a limited set of hand gestures that were distinctive and offered higher accuracy. The solution we came up with not only achieves this but also uses only low processing power, proved very robust in different lighting conditions and operated in real time,” said Dr. Premaratne.

The system comprises a web camera, gesture processing unit, hardware interface for the control unit and a universal remote control which is built into the device. The webcam captures the hand gestures and the software converts this into a signal which operates the remote controller. The series of commands devised by the researchers included switching the equipment on, turning the volume up and down, changing channel, play and stop.

Dr. Premaratne said the system can control up to eight items at a time, including DVDs and set top boxes, and is able to distinguish between real commands and unintentional gestures such as children playing.

Dr. Premaratne is with the School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering, the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Quang Nguyen is with the Research School of Information Science and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT Australia.

The full research paper: Consumer electronics control system based on hand gesture moment invariants, is published in the IET Computer Vision Research Journal. The abstract appears below and a full version is available from the IET Press Office:

Abstract from IET Computer Vision Research Journal: Almost all consumer electronic equipment today uses remote controls for user interfaces. However, the variety of physical shapes and functional commands that each remote control features also raises numerous problems: the difficulties in locating the required remote control, the confusion with the button layout, the replacement issue and so on. The consumer electronics control system using hand gestures is a new innovative user interface that resolves the complications of using numerous remote controls for domestic appliances. Based on one unified set of hand gestures, this system interprets the user hand gestures into pre-defined commands to control one or many devices simultaneously.The system has been tested and verified under both incandescent and fluorescent lighting conditions. The experimental results are very encouraging as the system produces real-time responses and highly accurate recognition towards various gestures.

Tony Henderson
Head of Media Relations IET                         
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