research-article

FingerSound: Recognizing unistroke thumb gestures using a ring

Authors:

Anandghan Waghmare,

Scott Gilliland,

Thad E. Starner,

Gregory D. AbowdAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, Volume 1, Issue 3

Article No.: 120, Pages 1 - 19

https://doi.org/10.1145/3130985

Published: 11 September 2017 Publication History

Abstract

We introduce FingerSound, an input technology to recognize unistroke thumb gestures, which are easy to learn and can be performed through eyes-free interaction. The gestures are performed using a thumb-mounted ring comprising a contact microphone and a gyroscope sensor. A K-Nearest-Neighbor(KNN) model with a distance function of Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) is built to recognize up to 42 common unistroke gestures. A user study, where the real-time classification results were given, shows an accuracy of 92%-98% by a machine learning model built with only 3 training samples per gesture. Based on the user study results, we further discuss the opportunities, challenges and practical limitations of FingerSound when deploying it to real-world applications in the future.

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Cited By

Hanayama SKitamura RYamamoto TAmesaka TChan LSugiura Y(2025)SkinRing: Ring-shaped Device Enabling Wear Direction-Independent Gesture Input on Side of Finger2025 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII)10.1109/SII59315.2025.10871054(386-392)Online publication date: 21-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1109/SII59315.2025.10871054
Chaffangeon Caillet AGoguey ANigay L(2025)Microgesture ＋ GraspInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103398195:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103398
Mahmud SParikh VLiang QLi KZhang RAjit AGunda VAgarwal DGuimbretiere FZhang C(2024)ActSonic: Recognizing Everyday Activities from Inaudible Acoustic Wave Around the BodyProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36997528:4(1-32)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699752
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

FingerSound: Recognizing unistroke thumb gestures using a ring
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction techniques
      1. Gestural input
      2. Text input

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Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies Volume 1, Issue 3

September 2017

2023 pages

EISSN:2474-9567

DOI:10.1145/3139486

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 11 September 2017

Accepted: 01 June 2017

Received: 01 February 2017

Published in IMWUT Volume 1, Issue 3

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Cited By

Hanayama SKitamura RYamamoto TAmesaka TChan LSugiura Y(2025)SkinRing: Ring-shaped Device Enabling Wear Direction-Independent Gesture Input on Side of Finger2025 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII)10.1109/SII59315.2025.10871054(386-392)Online publication date: 21-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1109/SII59315.2025.10871054
Chaffangeon Caillet AGoguey ANigay L(2025)Microgesture ＋ GraspInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103398195:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103398
Mahmud SParikh VLiang QLi KZhang RAjit AGunda VAgarwal DGuimbretiere FZhang C(2024)ActSonic: Recognizing Everyday Activities from Inaudible Acoustic Wave Around the BodyProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36997528:4(1-32)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699752
Yu THu GZhang RLim HMahmud SLee CLi KAgarwal DNie SOh JGuimbretière FZhang C(2024)Ring-a-Pose: A Ring for Continuous Hand Pose TrackingProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36997418:4(1-30)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699741
Hiraki HKanazawa SMiura TYoshida MMochimaru MRekimoto J(2024)WhisperMask: a noise suppressive mask-type microphone for whisper speechProceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 202410.1145/3652920.3652925(1-14)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652920.3652925
Zhang PZhou QLu TGu HGu N(2024)DeLink: An Adversarial Framework for Defending against Cross-site User Identity LinkageACM Transactions on the Web10.1145/364382818:2(1-34)Online publication date: 5-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643828
Wang XZhang Y(2024)TextureSightProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36314137:4(1-27)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631413
Kin KWan CKoh KMarin ACamgöz NZhang YCai YKovalev FBen-Zacharia MHoople SNunes-Ueno MSanchez-Rodriguez MBhargava AWang RSauser EMa S(2024)STMG: A Machine Learning Microgesture Recognition System for Supporting Thumb-Based VR/AR InputProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642702(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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Waghmare ABoldu RWhitmire EKienzle W(2023)OptiRing: Low-Resolution Optical Sensing for Subtle Thumb-to-Index Micro-InteractionsProceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3607822.3614538(1-13)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2023
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Martin DLeng ZGemicioglu TWomack JHeath JNeubauer WKwon HPloetz TStarner T(2023)FingerSpeller: Camera-Free Text Entry Using Smart Rings for American Sign Language Fingerspelling RecognitionProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3614491(1-5)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
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