Doppler Effect Allows Kinect-Like Computer Gesture Control

We never knew #-Link-Snipped-# #-Link-Snipped-# was so cool that it can be used in computer gesture control. The team at #-Link-Snipped-# Research and University of Washington have used the principles that we learned during our #-Link-Snipped-# classes to perform basic computer mouse operations like scrolling and double-clicking. We've already seen an advanced version of gesture control with #-Link-Snipped-#, but the good point about this technology is that it uses your comptuer's built in microphone & speakers! No extra hardware is needed.



Researchers have developed a special software called 'SoundWave' that uses computer's inbuilt microphone to trace the change in the frequency of a tone (20 and 22 kHz, beyond human hearing range) generated by computer's speakers. SoundWave analyses changes in frequencies and then interprets them into relevant computer commands. So far, the team has succeeded in capturing 5 components involved in the change of frequency viz. velocity, direction, proximity, the size of the object and time variation. Check out cool video demonstration of this project on official #-Link-Snipped-#.