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Novel Algorithm for Finger Tip Blob Detection Using Image Processing

Prashanth C Ravoor 1, Ranjani S 2, and Sudhir Rao Rupanagudi 2
1. Student, Dept of Information Science and Engineering, BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru, India
2. Worldserve Education, Bengaluru, India

Abstract—Touch screens are immensely popular in the modern world. They have reached the pinnacle of their success in mobile phones. Touch screens, along with the Android OS, have completely revolutionized the cell phone and have led to the creation of the smart-phone as we know it today. These touch screens are generally resistive or capacitive. A third type exists, which is the image processing based touch screens. The image processing touch screen has lost ground over its competitors due its large size, and have been limited to certain fields. One notable disadvantage of image processing touch screens is that its use is hindered by lighting: it is simply unusable in poor or unsuitable lighting conditions. This paper presents a solution to this problem by introducing a novel and cost effective approach to detect a fingertip blob on an image processing based touch screen under any surrounding light conditions. The setup uses basic LEDs and a normal visible light camera as opposed to the conventional use of IR cameras. The algorithm was implemented using the Java Development Kit, version 1.5 (update 22). A very high accuracy for detecting blob co-ordinates at any location on the screen under different lighting conditions was obtained.

Index Terms—image processing, finger-tip blob, web-cam based touch-screens, touch-screens, algorithm for finger-tip detection, blob detection

Cite: Prashanth C Ravoor, Ranjani S and Sudhir Rao Rupanagudi, "Novel Algorithm for Finger Tip Blob Detection Using Image Processing," Journal of Image and Graphics, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 147-152, September 2013. doi: 10.12720/joig.1.3.147-152