BLEselect: Gestural IoT Device Selection via Bluetooth Angle of Arrival Estimation from Smart Glasses

Abstract

Spontaneous selection of IoT devices from the head-mounted device is key for user-centered pervasive interaction. BLEselect enables users to select an unmodified Bluetooth 5.1 compatible IoT device by nodding at, pointing at, or drawing a circle in the air around it. We designed a compact antenna array that fits on a pair of smart glasses to estimate the Angle of Arrival (AoA) of IoT and wrist-worn devices’ advertising signals. We then developed a sensing pipeline that supports all three selection gestures with lightweight machine learning models, which are trained in real-time for both hand gestures. Extensive characterizations and evaluations show that our system is accurate, natural, low-power, and privacy-preserving. Despite the small effective size of the antenna array, our system achieves a higher than 90% selection accuracy within a 3 meters distance in front of the user. In a user study that mimics real-life usage cases, the overall selection accuracy is 96.7% for a diverse set of 22 participants in terms of age, technology savviness, and body structures.