Most Significant Risks and Management
The primary project risk was that the HTML/JavaScript web app might not run on mobile devices due to camera access restrictions—mobile browsers require a secure (HTTPS) context for getUserMedia. This could have blocked essential testing for calibration, overlay alignment, and latency on real devices. The team mitigated this risk by deploying the app to GitHub Pages (which provides automatic HTTPS), converting all asset links to relative paths, and adding a user-triggered “Start” button to request camera permissions. The solution was verified to load securely via https:// and successfully initialize the mobile camera stream.
Changes to System Design
The system has transitioned to a Gradient-Based Tip Detection method, addressing the core limitations of the previous Interest Box and Centroid Method. The earlier approach calculated the contact point by finding the pixel centroid within a fixed Region of Interest (ROI) after applying a single color threshold. While effective in controlled conditions—especially with stable lighting and a dark background—its performance degraded significantly under variable lighting or background changes. This dependency on a fixed threshold required constant manual tuning or complex adaptive algorithms. The new method overcomes these issues by projecting a search vector and detecting sharp color gradients between the fingertip and surface using a robust combination of RGB and HSL data. Although initially explored, the method’s improved calculation of color transitions now makes it more consistent and reliable. By focusing on the physical edge contrast, it achieves stable fingertip contact detection across diverse environments, enhancing both accuracy and practicality.
Updated Schedule
Joyce has spent additional time refining the fingertip detection algorithm after finding that the previous method was unstable under certain lighting and background conditions. Consequently, she plans to compress Task 4 (Tap Detection) into a shorter period and may request assistance from teammates for testing to ensure that project milestones remain on schedule.
