QWERTY- and 8pen- based touchless text input with hand movement

Abstract

Natural user interface offer touchless and convenient medium for communication. Hands-free control of electronic devices is largely based on sophisticated methods of image processing and pattern recognition. While mouse alternative may be successfully achieved with the use of camera and body movements, the main problem is the text entry. New touchless interfaces are generally introduced for convenient manipulation in Graphical User Interface but casual text entry using the same medium of communication is still necessary. The problem of non-contact onscreen keyboard interface is addressed in the article. Two interfaces for touchless text input are proposed and compared. The first one uses standard onscreen QWERTY keyboard operated with hand movement in front of the camera. The second solution is the adaptation of a strokebased text entry technique 8pen [1] to touchless interface.