Selecting Objects on Conveyor Belts Using Pointing Gestures Sensed by a Wrist-worn Inertial Measurement Unit

Abstract

We introduce an intuitive pointing-based interface to select objects moving on a system of conveyor belts. The interface has minimal sensing requirements, as the operator only needs to wear an Inertial Measurement Unit on the wrist (e.g., a smartwatch). LED strips provide the required visual feedback to precisely point to the objects and select them. We test the proposed approach in three environments of different complexity. Experiments compare our approach with a graphical interface where the user clicks on packages with a mouse; quantitative results show that our interface compares favorably, especially in difficult scenarios involving many packages moving fast.