Recent Trends in HCI: A survey on Data Glove, LEAP Motion and Microsoft Kinect

The way humans interact with material objects around them has evolved a lot over the ages, with new technologies being added to the lot over the years. Same goes for the human computer interaction, the basic mode comprising of mouse and various buttons and keyboards etc. has become obsolete now. New emerging technologies and ideas from various companies are setting a benchmark for the way this interaction can take place, with utmost ease and precision. From visual based guidance systems to recognition based on retina scan, fingerprints or gesture recognition, the possibilities are virtually endless. Gone are the days of needing a GUI for interacting with a computer application, each replaced by motion tracking softwares and firmwares for the same. This paper deals with three emerging technologies for the same, LEAP motion controller, Microsoft Kinect and Data Glove. Gesture recognition using data glove is an efficient choice for HCI but it has poor interface and it lags as far as computational time is concerned. Microsofts Xbox Kinect uses a high definition camera and an active IR feature to help recognize the body features and skeletal tracking to track movements of multiple users. Leap motion with its state of the art depth sensing camera and ability to render hand gestures using palm and fingers orientation in 3D space is yet another choice for HCI. A detailed description and working principles of each of the devices, along with the applications and advantages of one over the other are discussed in brief in this paper, along with the future prospects discussed at the end.