Gesture activated home appliance
First Claim
1. An apparatus for controlling an appliance, the apparatus comprising:
- means for receiving an image stream, the image stream comprising a gesture;
means for recognizing the gesture from the image stream;
means for identifying a home appliance operation associated with the image stream, wherein the gesture is associated with a distinct home appliance operation; and
means for causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed, wherein means for causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed comprises;
means for accessing a data store to determine the distinct home appliance operation associated with the gesture, andmeans for causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed via a switch coupled to an appliance controller wherein the means for causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed is configured to actuate the switch to turn on a home appliance if the recognized gesture is associated with the distinct home appliance operation associated with the home appliance.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Apparatus for operating home appliances using gesture recognition are disclosed. An image receiver receives a continuous stream of images of a gesture made within the image receiver'"'"'s field of view. An image processor is connected to the image receiver for sampling the received stream of gesture images to form a gesture image sequence, and for recognizing whether the gesture image sequence corresponds to one of a predefined set of gestures. If the input gesture is recognized as being one of the predefined gestures, an operations processor, which is connected to the image processor, identifies a home appliance operation associated with the recognized gesture. An appliance controller is connected to the operations processor for causing the predefined home appliance operation to be performed. Home appliances and methods for operating home appliances using gesture recognition are also disclosed.
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Citations
18 Claims
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1. An apparatus for controlling an appliance, the apparatus comprising:
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means for receiving an image stream, the image stream comprising a gesture; means for recognizing the gesture from the image stream; means for identifying a home appliance operation associated with the image stream, wherein the gesture is associated with a distinct home appliance operation; and means for causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed, wherein means for causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed comprises; means for accessing a data store to determine the distinct home appliance operation associated with the gesture, and means for causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed via a switch coupled to an appliance controller wherein the means for causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed is configured to actuate the switch to turn on a home appliance if the recognized gesture is associated with the distinct home appliance operation associated with the home appliance. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. A method for controlling an appliance, the apparatus comprising:
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receiving a gesture, wherein the gesture is recognized from an image stream and is associated with a distinct home appliance operation; causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed in response to receiving the gesture, wherein causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed in response to receiving the gesture comprises; accessing a data store to determine the distinct home appliance operation associated with the gesture, and causing the distinct home appliance operation to be performed via a switch coupled to an appliance controller. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13)
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14. A system for controlling an appliance, the system comprising:
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a memory storage; and a processing unit coupled to the memory storage, wherein the processing unit is operative to; receiving a gesture, wherein the gesture is recognized from an image stream and is associated with an appliance operation; causing the appliance operation to be performed in response to receiving the gesture wherein causing the appliance operation to be performed in response to receiving the gesture comprises; accessing a data store to determine the appliance operation associated with the gesture, and causing the appliance operation to be performed via a switch coupled to an appliance controller. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18)
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Specification