Imaging surround system for touch-free display control

Abstract

The subject system hardware and methodology combine disparate cameras into a cohesive gesture recognition environment. To render an intended computer, gaming, display, etc. control function, two or more cameras with non-coaxial axes are trained on a space to detect and lock onto an object image regardless of its depth coordinate. Each camera captures one 2D view of the gesture and the plurality of 2D gestures are combined to infer the 3D input.

1 . A system for input gesture recognition comprising:
 a first camera having a first optical axis; and   a second camera second optical axis;   the first and second cameras connected for data transmission to a computer processor,   wherein the computer processor is configured to compare images from the first and second cameras to recognize user input gestures without performing stereo imaging calculations, and   wherein the first and second optical axes are angled with respect to one another by at least about 30 degrees.   
     
     
         2 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the optical axes are angled by at least about 60 degrees. 
     
     
         3 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the optical axes are angle by about 90 degrees. 
     
     
         4 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the no calculations are preformed including triangulation of matched features within the images. 
     
     
         5 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the axes are setup at an angle unknown to the user. 
     
     
         6 . The system of  claim 5 , wherein image comparison occurs within the processor with an unknown angle. 
     
     
         7 . The system of  claim 5 , wherein the first and second camera are set in separate housings. 
     
     
         8 . The system of  claim 7 , wherein the first camera is set in a housing with a primary display. 
     
     
         9 . The system of  claim 8 , wherein the second camera is set within a smart phone. 
     
     
         10 . The system of  claim 8 , wherein the second camera is set within a tablet computer. 
     
     
         11 . The system of  claim 7 , wherein the first and second cameras are each set within a smart phone. 
     
     
         12 . The system of  claim 11 , wherein the processor is a processor of one or both of the smart phones. 
     
     
         13 . The system of  claim 8 , wherein the primary display is the display of a laptop computer further comprising a keyboard panel section. 
     
     
         14 . The system of  claim 13 , wherein the second camera is housed in the keyboard panel section. 
     
     
         15 . The system of  claim 13 , wherein the second camera is housed in a smart phone positioned on a plane parallel with and in front of the keyboard panel section. 
     
     
         16 . The system of  claim 8 , wherein the primary display is the display of a laptop computer and the second camera is positioned above the laptop computer by a boom. 
     
     
         17 . The system of  claim 16 , wherein the boom is connected to a laptop computer docking station. 
     
     
         18 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the cameras are wirelessly connected. 
     
     
         19 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the processor is configured to perform scale invariant feature recognition for successive images from each camera and generate an output signal corresponding to a gesture from a look-up table corresponding to the combination of the recognized features from both cameras. 
     
     
         20 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the successive images are not necessarily sequential. 
     
     
         21 - 26 . (canceled)