Gesture recognition using RFID technology

• DOI: 10.1007/s00779-011-0395-z
• Publication Date: 2011-06-10T07:37:46Z
• Authors: Parvin Asadzadeh; Lars Kulik; Egemen Tanin
• Keywords: 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology

We propose a gesture recognition technique based on RFID: cheap and unintrusive passive RFID tags can be easily attached to or interweaved into user clothes, which are then read by RFID antennas. These readings can be used to recognize hand gestures, which enable interaction with applications in an RFID-enabled environment. For instance, it allows people to interact with large displays in public collaboration spaces without the need to carry a dedicated device. We propose the use of multiple hypothesis tracking and the use of subtag count information to track the motion patterns of passive RFID tags. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first on motion pattern tracking using passive RFID tags. Despite the reading uncertainties inherent in passive RFID technology, our experiments show that the proposed gesture recognition technique has an accuracy of up to 93%.