Peepholes with no strings attached: using image processing as input in camera-phones

ABSTRACT

Peepholes are virtual windows to large workspaces. Using a peephole provides an intuitive interface onto information spaces too large to be viewed on the screen of a mobile device. To date, these peephole systems have relied on tethered tracking devices or string connected to a desktop mouse to provide input to the system. In this paper, we investigate the use of the cameras on current camera-phones as an untethered and more readily available input device. We present various image processing algorithms and how we refined the final algorithm which converted the camera input to directional information. This algorithm was then tested in a map-browsing application. Whilst the final implementation suffered from performance limitations, we believe that using higher-end smartphones with higher quality cameras and faster processors will ultimately provide useful solutions.

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INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
HCI, image correlation, map viewing, mobile device, peephole, small screen, virtual window