Weekly Update 4/28/2011

What did we do this week:

There was not much more done this week on the primary Kinect app due to time constraints.  Small bug fixes were completed but nothing too severe.

The third party app, however, made considerable progress.  There were some enhancements made and some major bugs were fixed.  At this stage it is pretty close to being complete.

Problems:

No significant problems other than time.

Project Status: 

The project is starting to wrap up and is pretty close to completion.  There are only a few more things left to do.  We want to integrate at least one gesture into the third party app but we are a little concerned that we wont have enough time to complete this.

New Ideas:

No new ideas as the project is pretty much done.

4/21/2010

What did we do this week:

This week we finally nailed down the interactions and gestures that we are using for the Kinect system.  The mouse is tracked with the right hand while the left hand does the clicking and other gestures:

left hand straight: click

left hand up: right click

left hand down: double click

left hand right: alt-tab

These gestures were run through a user study with 10 users and the report was written up.  The new system was much better received than the old system so that was encouraging.  The picture below is the template that we had users click on in MS Paint for the user study.

Problems:

The lack of precision from the Kinect is still a problem.  The hand tracking is pretty jittery but unfortunately that is just not something that we can fix in the current time frame.

Project Status: 

The project is entering its final phase.  We are on schedule to be able to deliver a system that will allow users to control the windows environment.  Third party application support is questionable.

New Ideas:

No new ideas.  It's a little too late for that.

Weekly Update 4/14/11

What did we do this week:

This week involved a good amount of more refactoring.  We worked some more on the clicking mechanism and changed it twice in the week.  Originally we had planned on making the clicking with the right hand work better but that just didn't seem to work well enough.  At the end of the week we got multi hand tracking working so now we can click by pushing in with the left hand while the right hand is used only for tracking.

The client app also made some considerable progress.  It can now handle pictures, videos, and audio.

Problems:

We are still having trouble getting the clicking down just right.  This has really put us on hold because fixing this has to be our first priority.

Project Status: 

The project is coming along but it's not shaping up into what we originally had in mind.  We had initially envisioned a system that was more geared towards third party developers but we now realize that we must focus more on the end user.

New Ideas:

This week we had the idea of using the left hand to click while the right hand was tracking.

Video:

File format is giving YouTube trouble.  Video can be downloaded at this link:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/280520/ClientAppVideo_4-13.avi

Weekly Update 4/7/2011

What did we do this week:

This week has been spent trying to improve the clicking mechanism.  Last week we learned in our user study that the clicking wasn't necessarily done correctly.  People had a good amount of trouble performing accurate clicks.  To address this we are now locking the X and Y coordinates when we see a fast change in Z.

Problems:

When running the user study we found that our clicking mechanism was pretty bad to say the least.  The problem is now to fix it.  Due to this bug we are having to change the scope of our system.  Too much of our system was dependent on having a working click and track.

Project Status: 

The project scope has been greatly reduced in the past week.  Due to the accuracy problems and the time needed to fix this, we have decided to drop third party application support for now.  We recognize that no matter how well we support third party apps, no one will want to use our system if we don't have a good system mouse replacement.

New Ideas:

Currently we are locking the X and Y coordinates when a swift change in the Z coordinate was detected.  While this provided a large increase in clicking accuracy, it is still not good enough.  We are now thinking that we will also do some backtracking on the points that the hand was at.  Therefore, when the user starts a click,  the program will look back 5 or so points and use that point as the point that the user wanted to click.

Weekly Update 3/31/2011

What did we do this week:

This week more effort was put into merging the server and the hand tracking.  We were finally able to succeed on Monday night.  This allowed us to use the system to conduct a user study on Tuesday and have the report written for Thursday.  The study revealed a lot about our system and gave us some good ideas about where we need to go in the future.

Problems:

When running the user study we found that our clicking mechanism was pretty bad to say the least.  Users had no precision with their clicks at all because the hand would move while the clicking gesture was performed.  Multiple solutions have been proposed to fix this.

Project Status: 

The project is moving along nicely now that we have some of the proof of concept programs integrated.  We can now fix the clicking problem and look into gestures that can be added to our system.

New Ideas:

The clicking was a problem so we are looking at two solutions.  The first would be to write our own push recognizer that would take the click sooner than the NITE push recognizer.  The second is to back track through inputs to where the click started and take that point instead of the point where the click was recognized.

Weekly Update 3/24/2011

What did we do this week:

We have a lot of proof of concept programs laying around that work independently but only do one or two things. This week we focused on bringing some of these programs together.  The primary work was done integrating the Kinect hand tracking software into the background server.  These two programs, when properly merged will provide the backbone for the final product. 

We also received another Kinect yesterday which will allow us to streamline the development and user studies.

Problems:

The merging of the programs is moving a little slower than expected.  There were some roadblocks regarding dependencies and missing libraries that are slowly being fixed.  This isn't a show stopper though, and should be overcome shortly.

Project Status: 

The project is a little behind and will take some effort to get back on track if we want to implement the total design by the end of the semester.  Fortunately the work for the next couple weeks should be somewhat easier and therefore more enjoyable.

New Ideas:

No new ideas for this week.  The current implementation issues are taking precedence.

No important picture for the week as no new features have been implemented. All effort has been focused on consolidating all our proof of concept programs.

Weekly Update 03/10/2011

What did we do this week:

The gesture recognition proof of concept's progress has slowed due to external factors however we were able to get the system mouse to be controlled by the Kinect with clicking by pressing in on the hand.  This was a major hurdle for us.

Problems:

Some of the biggest problems we face right now are external issues that are occupying our time, keeping us away from the Kinect project.  Everyone in the group got hammered with homework from other classes and we had a slew of tests because it is the week before spring break.

Project Status: 

Despite the external distractions the project is coming along quite nicely.  We now have the basic framework down for controlling the system mouse and clicking.  The next step is to progress into recognizing gestures.

New Ideas:

No new ideas for this week.  The current implementation issues are taking precedence.