MidasTouch: A Finger-Worn Device for Sensing Gestural Input on Everyday Objects

This work presents MidasTouch, a finger-worn RFID-inertia-sensor for sensing gestural interactions on everyday objects. The fingerstall-like device comprising an RFID reader and a couple of motion sensors for recognizing the tagged objects and the hand gestures that users are performing on them. The short-range (∼2cm) RFID sensor mounted on the index fingertip functions as a robust feature for object identification and inertia sensor data segmentation, allowing the users wearing the device to directly associate their intentions with tagged objects by touching them or performing natural gestures on them. By wearing the device with the embedded sensing, users can easily log the daily activities related to the everyday things, or control smart things using every- day things. Results of two 10-user studies suggest that the proposed system is feasible of recognizing gestures from everyday objects, and supports reliably uses by each user in a personalized train-and-use basis.