WUW - Wear Ur World - A Wearable Gestural Interface Joshua Latvatalo

What is WUW? WUW is a wearable gestural interface that projects information onto surfaces or objects, and allows the user to interact with the information through different gestures and movements. The system consists of a pocket projector and small camera attached to the users hat, color markers on the users fingertips, and a laptop carried in the users backpack. The camera captures a video stream, the software running on the laptop processes the stream using simple computer-vision techniques, and tracks the color markers on the users fingertips. All of the information from the system is displayed through the projector, projected onto a wall or other surface for the user to see.

What can WUW do? The main purpose of this system is to allow the use of gestural commands to interface with the system. There are three main categories that WUW focuses on:  Gestures supported by multi-touch systems. This category includes popular touch commands like zooming with two fingers, flipping through images with one finger, and drawing using a finger as a pen.  Freehand gestures. These gestures include creating a rectangle or frame shape with both hands to activate a picture taking application, and putting both hands together palm to palm, which with navigate back to a home page.  Iconic gestures, or in-the-air drawings. These gestures are symbols drawn in the air that the system can then recognize as instructions.

WUW Applications One application is an interactive maps app. A map is displayed on a nearby surface by the projector, and the user can interact with it with hand gestures that they are familiar with, such as zooming in, zooming out and panning the map. Another application that WUW supports is a drawing app. This allows the user to draw on any surface they want, using their finger as a pen. Another application is a camera/photo gallery. By making a frame shape with their hands, the user can take pictures without taking a camera out. The user can then project their photo album onto a surface, and flicks through all their photos. There is an analog watch application also. If the user draws a circle on their wrist, the system will project an analog watch.

Demo

Source Mistry, Pranav, Pattie Maes, and Liyan Chang. “WUW - wear Ur world.” Proceedings of the 27th international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA '09. Boston, MA, USA,