A Vision-Based Universal Control System for Home Appliances

Based on computer vision techniques, this paper presents a universal remote control system for home appliances. This system consists of three major components: a paper control panel, a web camera wore on the user’s chest, and a laptop computer. The system operates as follows. First, the user points his finger tip to a virtual button on the paper panel to select a specific appliance. Second, a function button is pointed at to operate an assigned function. The user’s hand image is captured by the camera and the virtual button pointed by the fingertip is detected by computer vision techniques. Then a specific infrared code is emitted to control the corresponding appliance for a specific function. The advantage of this universal remote control system is that several remote controllers can be integrated together to simplify the operations of different appliances. The system performance is shown in the experimental results.