New technology controls home appliances using gestures

Homes are getting smarter technologically speaking and this trend is going to continue. Technology is ever-changing and more and more gadgets are finding their way into our living rooms.  We have smartphones loaded with millions of applications to take care of every aspect of our lives. Soon we are going to have these gadgets control our home appliances. Most consumer electronics are equipped with Wi-Fi or some other type of connectivity. They are able to connect to a central control system which will be controlled by our smartphones. Speech, motion and press or touch controls are going to be used during operations of these gadgets. I will be even more optimistic and state that mind control is not far from realityJ.

The Wisee system being developed by the University of Washington is set to register interruptions in Wi-Fi signals in homes. Software will then interpret the body movements or gestures causing the interruption of the signal into commands to control some home appliances. The design developed is capable of reading and recognizing different body movements. These movements by a person are coded into commands, for example to turn up the volume of the stereo a person can pat the air in an upward motion. The team was able to conduct a test using 5 individual and 94% of 900 gestures worked although this reduced with increase in distractions such as (other people introduced to make random motions while the individual made the actual motion command). The gadget requires that the user registers a gesture specific or unique to them for recognition purposes. Before making any commands the user needs to make the unique gesture to alert the program that they are around. This recognition system helps to improve on the security and stop other people from interfering with your system.

The technology is similar to the one used to Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect where motion is read to activate the command. The major difference though is that the Kinect requires the user to be within the camera’s sight. Wi-Fi signals are able to permeate through walls this makes the Wisee program operable between rooms. An individual can control a Wi-Fi home appliance situated in the sitting room from the bedroom and so on.