Tracking On-Desk Gestures Based on Wi-Fi CSI on Low-Cost Microcontroller

Nowadays, there is a growing demand to understand the mental well-being of office workers, driven by increased awareness of its impact on productivity and the need for healthier work environments. Recently, the use of Wi-Fi channel state information (CSI) for activity recognition has received significant attention due to its wide availability and privacy protection. In this paper, we propose a passive desk body gesture recognition system that utilizes Wi-Fi CSI from an ESP32 toolkit to automatically detect the worker's mood and emotions. The system is designed to operate within the Internet of Things ecosystem, employing a low-energy device to collect and compress CSI measurements, resulting in improved energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The proposed system demonstrates high recognition accuracy of over 98 % in-session and 72 % out-session evaluations.