There are a number of ways to control an automobile without using the pedals, and sometimes even without using the steering wheel. Most commonly these alternative control mechanisms are installed in vehicles whose owners are disabled in some way, but [Anurag] has taken this idea of alternative control one step further. He has built a car that can be driven by hand gestures alone.
On a remote controlled car, a Raspberry Pi 2 was installed that handles processing and communication. A wireless network is created on the Pi, and a laptop connects to the Pi over the network. The web camera on the laptop regularly captures frames at 15 fps to check for the driver’s hand gestures. The image is converted to gray scale, thresholded, contours are obtained, and the centroid and farthest points are obtained.
After some calculations are done, a movement decision is taken. The decision is passed to the Pi, which in turn, passed that to the internal chip of the car. All of the code is available on the project’s github page. [Anurag] hopes that this can be scaled up to full sized cars in the future. We’ve seen gesture-based remote controls before that rely on Sonar sensors, so it’s interesting to see one that relies strictly on image processing.
What does the middle finger gesture do and how is it localized?
It’s mainly used to signal to other drivers! It even works when your car has no raspi or any computers on board for that matter. Use at your own risk!
The program only works when there is one finger/thumb pointed out of the fist. In all the other cases, the car won’t run. The car will stop if you show your palm.
So, if you show only your middle finger, it will work normally, understanding the movement directions.
Oh great. Wave at someone, car swerves off and hits tree. I’ll keep my hands on the wheel, thanks anyway
@dynamodan Right. Features like this will/should not be made standalone. We can make the car intelligent so that it understands when you are waving at someone or maybe not let the car collide.
Have a look at my main project which is “Self-driving cars” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbBeTtWJ_h4 .
It will not let you hit the tree, my friend.
Can you imagine an Italian trying to talk while driving one of those cars?
B^)
I love the Power Glove. It is so bad. (sorry, you gotta admit, that HAD to come)
I have seen a thesis like this 5 years ago. It was a Japanese guy that had the same outcomes.