Month: February 2022

Initially, for our project proposal we played it safe and thought of a system that involved a web app, projector, and camera that helps users navigate their work. The user would upload files onto the web app and have it projected on the wall. Then the user could move their work by making hand gestures that are detected by the camera. Truthfully, we would have been able to finish this in about a month. Professor Kim helped us come up with a more unique project that is focused on tracking head movement. We will use how the user moves their head to move the projection that they are looking at. I am in charge of the hardware portion so I looked into how we could build the projector system. I decided on using a tripod as the base and then adding a dual axis servo motor so we can have two degrees of freedom. We will also make an attachment that will hold the projector in place. One challenge I anticipate is minimizing the time it takes for the command to be sent and executed by the motor. The goal is to have the projector move up, down, left, and right as the person moves their head in real time.

After our proposal presentation, the team and I were feeling unsure about our project idea. So, I set up a meeting with Professor Kim and the other group members to discuss. We came to an agreement on a more innovative solution that focuses on head and eye tracking rather than hand tracking. Since then, I have been researching new computer vision methods for tracking head and eye movement and re-establishing use-case requirements. Luckily, Media Pipe (which I was originally using for hand tracking) has facial detection which can detect 3D face landmarks in real-time. I then researched how to estimate head rotation based on the movement of face landmarks. I also spent time thinking about more features we can add to our solution after our MVP is finished. Over the next week, I plan to gain a more solid understanding of the head and eye tracking implementation and relay that new knowledge in the Design Presentation. Even though our solution has changed, I still feel on track with deliverables and such related to the computer vision aspects.