Ambient Gesture-Recognizing Surfaces with Visual Feedback

In recent years, gesture-based interaction gained increasing interest in Ambient Intelligence. Especially the success of camera-based gesture recognition systems shows that a great variety of applications can benefit significantly from natural and intuitive interaction paradigms. Besides camera-based systems, proximity-sensing surfaces are especially suitable as an input modality for intelligent environments. They can be installed ubiquitously under any kind of non-conductive surface, such as a table. However, interaction barriers and the types of supported gestures are often not apparent to the user. In order to solve this problem, we investigate an approach which combines a semi-transparent capacitive proximity-sensing surface with an LED array. The LED array is used to indicate possible gestural movements and provide visual feedback on the current interaction status. A user study shows that our approach can enhance the user experience, especially for inexperienced users.