We present a wireless-inertial-measurement-unit- (WIMU-) based hand motion analysis technique for handwriting recognition in three-dimensional (3D) space. The proposed handwriting recognition system is not bounded by any limitations or constraints; users have the freedom and flexibility to write characters in free space. It uses hand motion analysis to segment hand motion data from a WIMU device that incorporates magnetic, angular rate, and gravity sensors (MARG) and a sensor fusion algorithm to automatically distinguish segments that represent handwriting from nonhandwriting data in continuous hand motion data. Dynamic time warping (DTW) recognition algorithm is used to recognize handwriting in real-time. We demonstrate that a user can freely write in air using an intuitive WIMU as an input and hand motion analysis device to recognize the handwriting in 3D space. The experimental results for recognizing handwriting in free space show that the proposed method is effective and efficient for other natural interaction techniques, such as in computer games and real-time hand gesture recognition applications.

In this paper, we present an inertial sensor-based touch and shake metaphor for expressive control of a 3D virtual avatar in a virtual environment. An intuitive six degrees-of-freedom wireless inertial motion sensor is used as a gesture and motion control input device with a sensor fusion algorithm. The algorithm enables user hand motions to be tracked in 3D space via magnetic, angular rate, and gravity sensors. A quaternion-based complementary filter is implemented to reduce noise and drift. An algorithm based on dynamic time-warping is developed for efficient recognition of dynamic hand gestures with real-time automatic hand gesture segmentation. Our approach enables the recognition of gestures and estimates gesture variations for continuous interaction. We demonstrate the gesture expressivity using an interactive flexible gesture mapping interface for authoring and controlling a 3D virtual avatar and its motion by tracking user dynamic hand gestures. This synthesizes stylistic variations in a 3D virtual avatar, producing motions that are not present in the motion database using hand gesture sequences from a single inertial motion sensor.

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