US 6,937,742 B2 · Gesture activated home appliance

Abstract

Apparatus for operating home appliances using gesture recognition are disclosed. An image receiver receives a continuous stream of images of a gesture made within the image receiver's field of view. An image processor is connected to the image receiver for sampling the received stream of gesture images to form a gesture image sequence, and for recognizing whether the gesture image sequence corresponds to one of a predefined set of gestures. If the input gesture is recognized as being one of the predefined gestures, an operations processor, which is connected to the image processor, identifies a home appliance operation associated with the recognized gesture. An appliance controller is connected to the operations processor for causing the predefined home appliance operation to be performed. Home appliances and methods for operating home appliances using gesture recognition are also disclosed.

Claims12

Dependent claims

An apparatus for operating a home appliance, the apparatus comprising:

an image receiver for receiving a continuous stream of gesture images of a gesture performed within a field of view of the image receiver;
an image processor that receives a video signal corresponding to the continuous stream of gesture images and recognizes the gesture based on information contained in the video signal;
an operations processor coupled to the image processor for identifying an operation of a particular home appliance associated with the gesture by comparing the recognized gesture with each of a predefined set of gestures, wherein each of the predefined gestures is associated with a distinct operation of a particular home appliance;
and
an appliance controller coupled to the operations processor for causing the home appliance operation to be performed.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Gesture activated home appliance

Life of this patent

Gesture activated home appliance

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims12