Hand gestures to control infotainment equipment in cars

Controlling multiple devices while driving steals drivers´ attention from the road and is becoming the cause of accidents in 1 out of 3 cases. Many research efforts are being dedicated to design, manufacture and test Human-Machine Interfaces that allow operating car devices without distracting the drivers´ attention. A complete system for controlling the infotainment equipment through hand gestures is explained in this paper. The system works with a visible-infrared camera mounted on the ceiling of the car and pointing to the shift-stick area, and is based in a combination of some new and some well-known computer vision algorithms. The system has been tested by 23 volunteers on a car simulator and a real vehicle and the results show that the users slightly prefer this system to an equivalent one based on a touch-screen interface.