Determining positional information of an object in space

A method of tracking motion of a target object for gesture control of a system by determining positional information of the target object moving in a region of space within range of a light sensitive sensor, the method including:

• scanning the region of space monitored by the light sensitive sensor by selectively illuminating respective directionally oriented light sources of a plurality of directionally oriented light sources that (i) are mounted to a single surface and (ii) have at least some overlapping fields of illumination;
• measuring, using the light sensitive sensor, one or more differences in a property of returning light emitted from the respective directionally oriented light sources and reflected from the target object as the target object moves through the region of space;
• and
• recognizing signals in response to (i) positional information of the target object determined based on at least, a first position in space at a first time t0 and a second position in space at a second time t1 sensed using the measured one or more differences in the property of the returning light and (ii) a non-coplanar movement of the target object determined in response to a difference in the determined positional information of the target object at the first time t0 and the second time t1.

A system of tracking motion of a target object for gesture control of the system by determining positional information of the target object moving in a region of space within range of a light sensitive sensor, the system including:

• a processor and a computer readable storage medium storing computer instructions configured to cause the processor to:
• scan the region of space monitored by the light sensitive sensor by selectively illuminating respective directionally oriented light sources of a plurality of directionally oriented light sources that (i) are mounted to a single surface and (ii) have at least some overlapping fields of illumination;
• measure, using the light sensitive sensor, one or more differences in an intensity of returning light emitted from the respective directionally oriented light sources and reflected from the target object as the target object moves through the region of space;
• and
• recognizing signals in response to (i) positional information of the target object determined based on at least, a first position in space at a first time t0 and a second position in space at a second time t1 sensed using the measured one or more differences in the intensity of the returning light and (ii) a non-coplanar movement of the target object determined in response to a difference in the determined positional information of the target object at the first time t0 and the second time t1.

A method of finding an object moving in a region of space within range of a light sensitive sensor and generating a three-dimensional (3D) model of the object for gesture control of a system, the method including:

• scanning the region of space monitored by the light sensitive sensor with directionally controllable illumination from selected directionally oriented illumination sources of a set of directionally oriented illumination sources that are mounted to a single surface;
• detecting illumination in the region of space including illumination reflected by non-coplanar movement of the object as the object moves through the region of space;
• determining a difference in a property of the illumination received for two or more points in the scanning;
• determining positional information of the object based at least in part upon the two or more points in the scanning corresponding to the determined difference in the property to identify the non-coplanar movement of the object;
• and
• generating, by a computer system, the 3D model of the object for control of the system.