Controlling a Quadcopter with Hand Gestures | Hacker News Reader

Controlling a Quadcopter with Hand Gestures

thejumperwire.com

69 pointstheseankelly12 comments

Hand Gesture controls bother me. I see all these fancy implementations enabling hand gestures such as the Google ATAP project called Soli [1], but none of these replace haptical feedback. One of the major aspects of any haptical human-to-machine interface is feedback and robustness. When you turn a high quality 30 indent encoder from Alps [2] or avionics grade Elma encoder [3]; you'll realize the value of haptic feedback. There is a reason why cockpits are full of knobs and dials, although unfortunately, that's changing due to highly integrated multi-function glass instruments.

Problem with hand gestures is robustness. Theramins (hand gesture based music instrument) are cool, but they take forever to master and I am not saying they are trying to replace pianos, but let's just say - iPad pianos are not fun precisely because of the lack of feedback.

I really think gesture based controls are inferior. They have no place in my living room, my car or anywhere in my life.

That said, I think the implementation of hand gesture based systems as pointed out in this article are truly interesting. It is a challenging problem.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0

[2]http://www.alps.com/prod/info/E/HTML/Potentiometer/RotaryPot...

[3]https://www.elma.com/en-as/products/rotary-switches/rotary-s...

I was about to say the same. The hand gesture control is the new "drag and drop" that was overhyped back in late 1990s.

While "drag and drop" has its uses today, it's nowhere as ubiquitous as its proponents back then wanted. Back then, it was forcefully pushed into spaces where it didn't belong.

Same for the gesture controls. Damn you, Minority Report, for putting this idea into the heads of the software business people. It's not all slick hand waving in the air.

I wish we could meet somewhere in the middle for user interfaces in general. We went from dedicated buttons and knobs to slates of glass. I was really hoping for reprogrammable buttons and knobs instead, where labels and scales are replaced with LCD displays.

IMO things like the Model 3 just take it too far.

I don't know how to explain this but I'll try my best:

Categorized/Binary controls: Things like clapping to turn on/off lights, or a hand gesture to navigate to home in a car.

Continuous controls: Changing temperature, modulating a note (Theramin), controlling a quadcopter as in this article.

Binary/categorized controls are kind of ok. Hand gestures for continuous controls are not ok.

I remember reading about some Google project that used haptic self-feedback for continuous gesture controls: To turn a virtual knob you'd rub your fingertips in a turning motion and to move a slider you'd slide your thumb along your index finger.

I think that's a pretty clever solution; unfortunately I can't find the blog post right now.

EDIT: They call it Project Soli: https://atap.google.com/soli/

A friend of mine has managedd to 3d print his FPV drone. The nexy step is that we're going to join forces and then we're probably going to hook it up with some Myoband or similar device to control it in a more "natural" way - hopefully we'll be successful - has anyone got any tips for us?

I did this with a Parrot AR Drone 2.0 and a Leap Motion. I let one of the project managers at work fly it in the cafeteria and she put it into the ceiling. I'd like to have tried it with FPV, as you had to look at the drone while keeping your hands in a reasonably tightly defined area above the Leap Motion.

Might be relevant for some of you.

Former colleagues of mine were experimenting with leap motion control for drones. They also had other experiments with the holidays lens and Oculus rift. I'm not sure whether they brought it together.

https://www.youtube.com/user/parrotsonjava

Hand gestures are not "entirely controlled", I mean you might want to cough, sneeze or yawn and put automatically the hand before your mouth, or you might be wanting to swat/chase a fly or mosquito away.

If you are hand gesture controlling - say - a browser or a painting app, at the most you use undo or back, but what happens with the quadcopter?

When I see hand gestures controls, my first thought is: it will be very painful very fast! It does look great in Sci-fi movies, but IMO it is not very practical.

This is so cool. I can't wait untill holo-lens like device become cheap and ubiquitous

What happens if you sneeze? Just wondering if things like that have to be accounted for.

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