Vision-Based Virtual Joystick Interface

Abstract

Input devices used nowadays are typically expensive, lack portability, and require a substantial amount of space. However, these limitations can be overcome by using virtual input devices. In this study, we propose a virtual joystick system, which is a type of virtual input device. Our system detects a handheld stick and computes the direction in which the user’s hand moves relative to a user-defined center. The process of the proposed system can be divided into three stages: Preprocessing, handheld stick detection, and direction calculation. In each stage, simple operations are performed and a color camera is used. Therefore, users do not need to purchase a high-performance computer or auxiliary devices to use the proposed system. We compare our system’s performance, gauging accuracy, and speed with those produced using a real joystick. The proposed system’s accuracy is competitive and has real-time speed in the laptop environment. ? Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.