Biometric Based Human-Computer Interaction Device

What it does

ThumbFi is a revolutionary ring that aims to simplify control of various devices by literally bringing control to your fingertips. All you have to do is touch different sections of your fingers to perform different tasks via the ring and execute commands.

Your inspiration

We are living in the 21st century, but the way we control electronic devices around us hasn’t changed much. Still we use a remote to change channels on TV, use a gamepad to control games on consoles and computer, and use switches to control appliances. We humans have technologies like touchscreen to interact with devices, but a disabled has very few options to play games on computer, or even simply turn light’s ON. Gesture detection and control devices exist and are the solution to this problem, but they are not accurate and reliable. They start from $150 (cost of a regular smartphone) which makes them unaffordable to many people.

How it works

This technology works via attaching a fingerprint scanner of the users thumb which can scan the phalange of the fingers and scan of each phalange is assigned a separate command. All you have to do is touch different sections of your fingers to perform different tasks. It eliminates the need to use different accessories for controlling different appliances. There are various applications of this technology - imagine playing games using only your fingers, a disabled person controlling his wheelchair, a blind person controlling his smartphone (making phone calls, SMS, using apps) with his fingertips. With the ThumbFi Android app, you can connect the ring via bluetooth and then configure your fingerprints. Once the device has scanned your phalanges, you can assign commands. Fingerprints are unique for every person, so its a very secure solution to control devices. A remote can be used by anyone, but this can be only used by the authorised person.

Design process

The first step was to find out the current gesture control technology avaliable in the market. I researched on voice control, genesture sensing cameras, gyroscopes, accelerometers and even flex sensors. Concluding, from the above researches, none of current technology meet specifications of my hypothesized device, I moved to the next step of the research. After having a look to all these solutions, I thought to use optical sensors or simply fingerprint scanners. Initiallly in the first version of ThumbFi, I was using accelerometers to sense gestures, but the accuacy was quite bad and assigning commands was also difficuit for the user. It was actually difficult for a user to remember a particular gesture for a command. I found out that Fingerprint scanners are far more accurate and can capture images of different sectors of fingers. Our fingers are divided into different phalanges and each phalanx can be used to send a different command to the receiver. The idea I got was to place a fingerprint scanner on the user's thumb, and whenever user touches a particular phalange (section) of the finger, a command should be executed. Finally I built V3.0 of ThumbFi, where the user can use the mobile app to connect the device via bluetooth and assign different commands to the device.

How it is different

Here’s a comparison of ThumbFi from the current solutions in the market: - Less expensive compared to current solutions like gesture recognition cameras. - 92% Accurate, which is one of the highest among assisstive technology avaliable in the market. - Very secure as it uses biometrics. - Wearable & Light (~30grams/1 ounces), which makes it easy to carry. - Very easy to setup via using our smartphone app. It is just as easy to configure ThumbFi on your fingers as configuring your fingerprints with you smartphone’s fingerprint scanner. - Wireless (uses BLE and 433Mhz RF for connectivity), can connect to any device upto a range of 100m. - Consumes less power compared to gesture sensing cameras, voice recognition systems, and EMG electrodes so it has longer battery life.

Future plans

ThumbFi has definitely outlived expectations and has come out as a device far better than the hypothesized one. It is as light as 10 sheets of paper together. On a single charge, it runs for nearly 24 hours, and is quite comfortable to wear. ThumbFi can be made available at less than $50, making it one of the most affordable gesture control device in the world. - Reduce size via VLSI, and finally make the size of ring smaller as shown in concept figure. - Improve battery life via power optimization in VLSI circuits - Add support for Apple iPhones - Build an API so that developers can build 3rd party applications on this infrastructure

Awards

1. Student Lab Competition - GITEX Technology Week 2017, Dubai 2. Undergraduate Research Competition 2018, Abu Dhabi 3. Young Innovators Festival 2018 - MeltingPot2020 Summit, Dubai