TiPoint

Smartglasses mostly rely on hardware interfaces such as touch-pad and buttons, which are often cumbersome and counter-intuitive to use. Furthermore, smartglasses feature cheap and low-power hardware preventing the use of advanced pointing techniques. To overcome these issues, we introduce TiPoint, a freehand mid-air interaction technique. TiPoint uses the monocular camera embedded in smartglasses to detect the user's hand, enabling intuitive and non-intrusive interaction. We introduce a light-weight algorithm for fingertip detection, which is especially suited for the limited hardware specifications and the short battery life time of smartglasses. Our evaluation shows that TiPoint as a mid-air non-intrusive interface delivers a better experience for users and smart glasses interactions, with users completing typical tasks 1.82 times faster than when using the original hardware.