While the rapid advent of future technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices represents an exciting development in our modern society, these technologies are often not adapted to everyone’s needs, leaving people with disabilities behind.
Enter Dots, an inclusive body movement-recognition system that empowers amputees and people with disabilities to interact with gesture-controlled smart devices more effectively.
The project was developed by Valentin Gong, Xiaohui Wang, and Lan Xiao, three designers from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, with the aim of making technology more inclusive.
Using two white, silicone discs containing inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors, which detect movement between any body parts, people with disabilities can control spatial interfaces in mixed reality and the Internet of Things, reports Dezeen.
As explained by the designers, when tech developers come up with new mixed reality and internet-of-things devices, these often don’t cater to people with disabilities due to a lack of relative datasets.
“While we may use thousands of people’s hand-motion videos to train one model, it is almost impossible to find two people with exactly the same form of disabilities,” the designers said. “Disability is often highly individual, which is not reflected in machine learning.”
Dots, on the other hand, enables people to freely interact with gesture-controlled technology based on their individual body conditions to best suit their unique disability.
Designed for maximum convenience, each of the system’s two dots can be attached to any two moveable body parts to detect the motion between them, allowing users to perform the four basic manipulations in 3D interfaces: selection, positioning, scaling, and rotation.
Even better, with additional adaptable design, Dots could also be used to control 2D interfaces like smartphones and laptops. To see the system in action, watch Dots’ explainer video by following the source article.
