The concept and design guidelines for an universal gesture-based remote control with simple intuitive operating are presented. The hand-held buttonless “SmartPointer” emits “structured” infrared (IR) light with a spatial pattern projected by a diffractive optical element (DOE). A cost-effective array of photodiodes on or near the devices to be remotely controlled (such as light, blinds, windows, heating/air conditioning or TV/radio) records the light intensities while a gesture is carried out. Based on the cross-correlation of the spatio-temporal intensity changes at all pairs of photodiodes, the trajectory of motion of the pattern is reconstructed and the gesture is recognized (classified). During tests with uninstructed persons, horizontal, vertical, circular and targeting gestures were most frequently used. Extensive simulations addressing design parameters of the 2D projection pattern and the receiver array were carried out to identify suitable parameter sets for highly reliable gesture reconstruction and recognition of the recorded gestures. As a result, DOE with various pseudo-random beam distributions can be applied.    «

The concept and design guidelines for an universal gesture-based remote control with simple intuitive operating are presented. The hand-held buttonless “SmartPointer” emits “structured” infrared (IR) light with a spatial pattern projected by a diffractive optical element (DOE). A cost-effective array of photodiodes on or near the devices to be remotely controlled (such as light, blinds, windows, heating/air conditioning or TV/radio) records the light intensities while a gesture is carried out. B...    »