Microsoft is working on a cheap gesture recognition system (UPD: + video)

The research division of Microsoft Research, in collaboration with the University of Washington, announced its development of SoundWave, a user's gesture recognition system, the functionality of which is somewhat similar to the well-known Kinect controller, however, it can do only with speakers and a microphone of a laptop or desktop.

The essence of the development is as follows: special software generates a sound with a frequency of 20-22 KHz, and the microphone, in turn, analyzes the parameters of the sound wave, on the basis of changes in which the decision about the user's behavior in front of the screen is made. So, for example, the fact that the frequency of the sound has not changed means that the user seems to be sitting quietly at the computer; if the user makes a certain characteristic gesture, then the frequency of the sound increases, and the system reacts in a certain way.
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In general, a bank of patterns of changes in sound parameters in the specified range is used depending on various factors, such as the technical capabilities of the device, the user's position behind the screen, the speed of his movements, etc. It is also possible to train the system with gestures that the user considers convenient for himself - so far, however, the system can only scroll the pages on the computer screen and turn it off if the user leaves; however, the work of SoundWave does not interfere with the sound of other programs, for example, music players or watching videos.

System developers claim that adding special equipment — better and more sensitive speakers and microphones — can qualitatively improve the accuracy of the system, which now accounts for 90% of the recognition of all user gestures; however, there are also no major obstacles to using the system on tablets or smartphones.

SoundWave Video Demonstration:


You can get acquainted with the report on the use of SoundWave, which will be presented at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems here .