Evaluation study on sensor placement and gesture selection for mobile devices

Mobile phones and video game controllers using gesture recognition technologies enable easy and intuitive operations, such as scrolling a browser and drawing objects. However, usually only one of each kind of sensor is installed in a device, and the effect of multiple homogeneous sensors on recognition accuracy has not been investigated. Moreover, the effect of the differences in the motion of a gesture has not been examined. We have investigated the use of a test mobile device with nine accelerometers and nine gyroscopes. We have captured the data for 27 kinds of gestures for a mobile tablet. We experimentally investigated the effects on recognition accuracy of changing the number and positions of the sensors and of the number and kinds of gestures. The results showed that the use of multiple homogeneous sensors has zero or negligible effect on recognition accuracy, but that using an accelerometer along with a gyroscope improves recognition accuracy. They also showed that some gestures were not consistent among test subjects and interdependent, so selecting specific gestures to use can improve recognition accuracy.