GestEarrings: Developing Gesture-Based Input Techniques for Earrings

Takehisa Furuuchi, Takumi Yamamoto, Takashi Amesaka, Katsutoshi Masai, Yuta Sugiura

Abstract: In recent years, wearable computing has become popular in society, and demand for devices that look comfortable when worn or operated has been increasing. Until now, various items such as hats, hair extensions, and masks have been developed as interfaces. In this study, we propose a method to turn earrings into a gesture input interface. Earrings are widely used as a fashion item, and we believe that the appearance and wearability of earring devices are socially acceptable. First, we explored user-defined gestures using three types of earrings with different shapes and characteristics. Next, we implemented earring devices capable of identifying each of the determined gesture sets. The gesture recognition rate for each earring was 83.6% (hanging earring/11 types), 96.6% (surface earring/8 types), and 87.0% (hoop earring/12 types).