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UEC Int’l Mini-Conference No.53 57

Leap Motion and Hand Tracking Technologies: Air-writing

Tiesheng YIN 1 and C.K.CHOO 2

1 UEC Exchange Study Program (JUSST Program)
2 The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan

Keywords: Leap Motion, Hand Tracking, Air-writing, human-computer interaction

Abstract

Leap Motion is an integrated hand tracking controller that includes three infrared LEDs and two
infrared cameras. It can automatically track hand movement data within its field of view and output
this data to a computer. Leap Motion offers a novel human-computer interaction method which can
control the computer with contactless hand movements. This study focuses on Leap Motion and air
writing, comparing two related papers.The first paper describes a self-training system for calligraphy
brushwork, utilizing Leap Motion to perform calligraphy writing on a simulated 2D virtual plane. In
this system, a rod held by the hand acts as the writing tool, with Leap Motion tracking the coordinates
of the rod’s tip. Horizontal movements control the brush’s position, while vertical movements adjust
the stroke thickness.The second paper proposes a novel word spotting methodology for 3D text using
Leap Motion sensor data, achieving handwriting and recognition of English in 3D space. This system
automatically rotates and normalizes sentences written with the index finger in various directions and
sizes, then splits the sentences into words for keyword recognition.By comparing these two papers,
it was found that 2D air-writing systems are simpler to design and implement and can easily utilize
existing handwriting processing software. However, they offer limited freedom in writing. In contrast,
3D air-writing provides higher degrees of freedom in writing but is more challenging to develop and
difficult to integrate with other relevant software.

∗
The author is supported by JASSO Scholarship.