research-article

SoundTrak: Continuous 3D Tracking of a Finger Using Active Acoustics

Authors:

Anandghan Waghmare,

Kenneth A. Cunefare,

Gregory D. AbowdAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, Volume 1, Issue 2

Article No.: 30, Pages 1 - 25

https://doi.org/10.1145/3090095

Published: 30 June 2017 Publication History

Abstract

The small size of wearable devices limits the efficiency and scope of possible user interactions, as inputs are typically constrained to two dimensions: the touchscreen surface. We present SoundTrak, an active acoustic sensing technique that enables a user to interact with wearable devices in the surrounding 3D space by continuously tracking the finger position with high resolution. The user wears a ring with an embedded miniature speaker sending an acoustic signal at a specific frequency (e.g., 11 kHz), which is captured by an array of miniature, inexpensive microphones on the target wearable device. A novel algorithm is designed to localize the finger’s position in 3D space by extracting phase information from the received acoustic signals. We evaluated SoundTrak in a volume of space (20cm × 16cm × 11cm) around a smartwatch, and show an average accuracy of 1.3 cm. We report on results from a Fitts’ Law experiment with 10 participants as the evaluation of the real-time prototype. We also present a set of applications which are supported by this 3D input technique, and show the practical challenges that need to be addressed before widespread use.

Supplementary Material

zhang (zhang.zip)

Supplemental movie, appendix, image and software files for, SoundTrak: Continuous 3D Tracking of a Finger Using Active Acoustics

Download
44.43 MB

References

[1]

Christoph Amma, Marcus Georgi, and Tanja Schultz. 2012. Airwriting: Hands-free mobile text input by spotting and continuous recognition of 3D-space handwriting with inertial sensors. In Wearable Computers (ISWC), 2012 16th International Symposium on. IEEE, 52--59.

Digital Library

[2]

Md Tanvir Islam Aumi, Sidhant Gupta, Mayank Goel, Eric Larson, and Shwetak Patel. 2013. DopLink: using the doppler effect for multi-device interaction. In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM international joint conference on Pervasive and ubiquitous computing. ACM, 583--586.

Digital Library

[3]

AE Brenner and P De Bruyne. 1970. A sonic pen: a digital stylus system. IEEE Trans. Comput. 19, 6 (1970), 546--548.

Digital Library

[4]

Liwei Chan, Yi-Ling Chen, Chi-Hao Hsieh, Rong-Hao Liang, and Bing-Yu Chen. 2015. CyclopsRing: Enabling Whole-Hand and Context-Aware Interactions Through a Fisheye Ring. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software 8 Technology (UIST ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 549--556.

Digital Library

[5]

Ke-Yu Chen, Kent Lyons, Sean White, and Shwetak Patel. 2013. uTrack: 3D Input Using Two Magnetic Sensors. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 237--244.

Digital Library

[6]

Artem Dementyev and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2014. WristFlex: Low-power Gesture Input with Wrist-worn Pressure Sensors. In Proceedings of the 27th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology - UIST ‘14. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Digital Library

[7]

EPOS. 2007. EPOS Ultrasonic Pen. (2007). http://tce.technion.ac.il/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/04/Nathan-Altman.pdf {Online; accessed 11-February-2017}.

[8]

Sidhant Gupta, Daniel Morris, Shwetak Patel, and Desney Tan. 2012. Soundwave: using the doppler effect to sense gestures. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 1911--1914.

Digital Library

[9]

Chris Harrison, Desney Tan, and Dan Morris. 2010. Skinput: appropriating the body as an input surface. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 453--462.

Digital Library

[10]

Cory Hekimian-Williams, Brandon Grant, Xiuwen Liu, Zhenghao Zhang, and Piyush Kumar. 2010. Accurate localization of RFID tags using phase difference. In RFID, 2010 IEEE International Conference on. IEEE, 89--96.

[11]

Wenchao Huang, Yan Xiong, Xiang-Yang Li, Hao Lin, Xufei Mao, Panlong Yang, and Yunhao Liu. 2014. Shake and walk: Acoustic direction finding and fine-grained indoor localization using smartphones. In IEEE INFOCOM 2014-IEEE Conference on Computer Communications. IEEE, 370--378.

[12]

Miguel C Junger and David Feit. 1986. Sound, structures, and their interaction. Vol. 225. MIT press Cambridge, MA.

[13]

Gierad Laput, Robert Xiao, Xiang ‘Anthony’ Chen, Scott E. Hudson, and Chris Harrison. 2014. Skin buttons: cheap, small, low-powered and clickable fixed-icon laser projectors. In Proceedings of the 27th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology - UIST ‘14. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Digital Library

[14]

Gierad Laput, Chouchang Yang, Robert Xiao, Alanson Sample, and Chris Harrison. 2015. EM-Sense: Touch Recognition of Uninstrumented, Electrical and Electromechanical Objects. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software 8 Technology (UIST ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 157--166.

Digital Library

[15]

Jian Liu, Yan Wang, Gorkem Kar, Yingying Chen, Jie Yang, and Marco Gruteser. 2015. Snooping keystrokes with mm-level audio ranging on a single phone. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. ACM, 142--154.

Digital Library

[16]

Kent Lyons, David Nguyen, Daniel Ashbrook, and Sean White. 2012. Facet: A Multi-segment Wrist Worn System. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 123--130.

Digital Library

[17]

Kent Lyons, Thad Starner, Daniel Plaisted, James Fusia, Amanda Lyons, Aaron Drew, and E. W. Looney. 2004. Twiddler typing. In Proceedings of the 2004 conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI ‘04. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

[18]

Yunfei Ma, Xiaonan Hui, and Edwin C Kan. 2016. 3d real-time indoor localization via broadband nonlinear backscatter in passive devices with centimeter precision. In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. ACM, 216--229.

Digital Library

[19]

Wenguang Mao, Jian He, and Lili Qiu. 2016. CAT: high-precision acoustic motion tracking. In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. ACM, 69--81.

Digital Library

[20]

Chirp Microsystems. 2013. Chirp. (2013). http://www.chirpmicro.com/technology.html {Online; accessed 11-February-2017}.

[21]

Adiyan Mujibiya, Xiang Cao, Desney S. Tan, Dan Morris, Shwetak N. Patel, and Jun Rekimoto. 2013. The Sound of Touch: On-body Touch and Gesture Sensing Based on Transdermal Ultrasound Propagation. In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (ITS ’13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 189--198.

Digital Library

[22]

Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Vikram Iyer, Desney Tan, and Shyamnath Gollakota. 2016. FingerIO: Using Active Sonar for Fine-Grained Finger Tracking. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1515--1525.

Digital Library

[23]

Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Vikram Iyer, Desney Tan, and Shyamnath Gollakota. 2016. FingerIO: Using Active Sonar for Fine-Grained Finger Tracking. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 1515--1525.

Digital Library

[24]

Pavel V Nikitin, Rene Martinez, Shashi Ramamurthy, Hunter Leland, Gary Spiess, and KVS Rao. 2010. Phase based spatial identification of UHF RFID tags. In RFID, 2010 IEEE International Conference on. IEEE, 102--109.

[25]

Nissanka B Priyantha, Anit Chakraborty, and Hari Balakrishnan. 2000. The cricket location-support system. In Proceedings of the 6th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking. ACM, 32--43.

Digital Library

[26]

Wenjie Ruan, Quan Z Sheng, Lei Yang, Tao Gu, Peipei Xu, and Longfei Shangguan. 2016. AudioGest: enabling fine-grained hand gesture detection by decoding echo signal. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. ACM, 474--485.

Digital Library

[27]

T. Scott Saponas, Desney S. Tan, Dan Morris, Ravin Balakrishnan, Jim Turner, and James A. Landay. 2009. Enabling Always-available Input with Muscle-computer Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 22Nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 167--176.

Digital Library

[28]

Mark J Stefik and J Courtenay Heater. 1989. Ultrasound position input device. (March 21 1989). US Patent 4,814,552.

[29]

Zheng Sun, Aveek Purohit, Raja Bose, and Pei Zhang. 2013. Spartacus: spatially-aware interaction for mobile devices through energy-efficient audio sensing. In Proceeding of the 11th annual international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services. ACM, 263--276.

Digital Library

[30]

Wei Wang, Alex X Liu, and Ke Sun. 2016. Device-free gesture tracking using acoustic signals. In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. ACM, 82--94.

Digital Library

[31]

Wikipedia. 2017. Inverse Square Law. (2017). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law {Online; accessed 11-February-2017}.

[32]

Haijun Xia, Tovi Grossman, and George Fitzmaurice. 2015. NanoStylus: Enhancing Input on Ultra-Small Displays with a Finger-Mounted Stylus. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software 8 Technology - UIST ‘15. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Digital Library

[33]

Cheng Zhang, AbdelKareem Bedri, Gabriel Reyes, Bailey Bercik, Omer T. Inan, Thad E. Starner, and Gregory D. Abowd. 2016. TapSkin: Recognizing On-Skin Input for Smartwatches. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 13--22.

Digital Library

[34]

Cheng Zhang, Junrui Yang, Caleb Southern, Thad E. Starner, and Gregory D. Abowd. 2016. WatchOut: Extending Interactions on a Smartwatch with Inertial Sensing. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 136--143.

Digital Library

[35]

Yang Zhang, Junhan Zhou, Gierad Laput, and Chris Harrison. 2016. SkinTrack: Using the Body As an Electrical Waveguide for Continuous Finger Tracking on the Skin. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1491--1503.

Digital Library

Cited By

Zhang JWang J(2024)FusionTrack: Towards Accurate Device-free Acoustic Motion Tracking with Signal FusionACM Transactions on Sensor Networks10.1145/365466620:3(1-30)Online publication date: 30-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3654666
Lian JYuan XLou JChen LWang HTzeng N(2024)Room-scale Location Trace Tracking via Continuous Acoustic WavesACM Transactions on Sensor Networks10.1145/364913620:3(1-23)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649136
Cao YDhekne AAmmar MOkoshi TKo JLiKamWa R(2024)UTrack3D: 3D Tracking Using Ultra-wideband (UWB) RadiosProceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services10.1145/3643832.3661881(345-358)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643832.3661881
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

SoundTrak: Continuous 3D Tracking of a Finger Using Active Acoustics
1. Hardware
  1. Communication hardware, interfaces and storage
    1. Sound-based input / output
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction devices
      1. Graphics input devices

Recommendations

Finger identification and hand gesture recognition techniques for natural user interface
APCHI '13: Proceedings of the 11th Asia Pacific Conference on Computer Human Interaction

The natural user interface using hand gesture have been popular field in Human-Computer-Interaction(HCI). Many research papers have been proposed in this field. They proposed vision-based, glove-based and depth-based approach for hand gesture ...
User Elicitation on Single-hand Microgestures
CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Gestural interaction has become increasingly popular, as enabling technologies continue to transition from research to retail. The mobility of miniaturized (and invisible) technologies introduces new uses for gesture recognition. This paper investigates ...
EchoWrist: Continuous Hand Pose Tracking and Hand-Object Interaction Recognition Using Low-Power Active Acoustic Sensing On a Wristband
CHI '24: Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Our hands serve as a fundamental means of interaction with the world around us. Therefore, understanding hand poses and interaction contexts is critical for human-computer interaction (HCI). We present EchoWrist, a low-power wristband that continuously ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies Volume 1, Issue 2

June 2017

665 pages

EISSN:2474-9567

DOI:10.1145/3120957

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 30 June 2017

Accepted: 01 March 2017

Revised: 01 February 2017

Received: 01 November 2016

Published in IMWUT Volume 1, Issue 2

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed

Funding Sources

Georgia Tech Wearable Computing Center Engagement

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

39
Total Citations
View Citations
1,914
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)92
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)17

Reflects downloads up to 16 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Zhang JWang J(2024)FusionTrack: Towards Accurate Device-free Acoustic Motion Tracking with Signal FusionACM Transactions on Sensor Networks10.1145/365466620:3(1-30)Online publication date: 30-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3654666
Lian JYuan XLou JChen LWang HTzeng N(2024)Room-scale Location Trace Tracking via Continuous Acoustic WavesACM Transactions on Sensor Networks10.1145/364913620:3(1-23)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649136
Cao YDhekne AAmmar MOkoshi TKo JLiKamWa R(2024)UTrack3D: 3D Tracking Using Ultra-wideband (UWB) RadiosProceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services10.1145/3643832.3661881(345-358)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643832.3661881
Bai YShahid ITakawale HRoy N(2024)ScribeProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36314117:4(1-31)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3631411
Ge LZhang QZhang JChen H(2024)EHTrack: Earphone-Based Head Tracking via Only Acoustic SignalsIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2023.329841211:3(4063-4075)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2023.3298412
Li YReddy RZhang CNandakumar R(2024)Beyond-Voice: Towards Continuous 3D Hand Pose Tracking on Commercial Home Assistant Devices2024 23rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN)10.1109/IPSN61024.2024.00017(151-162)Online publication date: 13-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/IPSN61024.2024.00017
Cai GWang J(2024)ATP: Acoustic Tracking and Positioning under Multipath and Doppler EffectIEEE INFOCOM 2024 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications10.1109/INFOCOM52122.2024.10621165(1841-1850)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOM52122.2024.10621165
Yang XWang XDong GYan ZSrivastava MHayashi EZhang Y(2023)HeadarProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36109007:3(1-28)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610900
Waghmare ABoldu RWhitmire EKienzle W(2023)OptiRing: Low-Resolution Optical Sensing for Subtle Thumb-to-Index Micro-InteractionsProceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3607822.3614538(1-13)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607822.3614538
Chen TChan JGollakota SSchulzrinne HKohler EMaltz DMisra V(2023)Underwater 3D positioning on smart devicesProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2023 Conference10.1145/3603269.3604851(33-48)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3603269.3604851
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents