Gesture-Controlled Home Automation with Mobile Interface for Disabled and Elderly

Abstract

The Gesture based control systems have been proposed as an alternative solution towards developing contactless and accessible smart home environments. The conventional ways of automating homes focus a lot on the use of mobile applications, physical switches, or voice commands, which might not be convenient to some individuals who have mobility issues or when they do not want to be touched. The given project suggests a gesture-controlled real time appliance management system that would have the time-out and the ability to monitor it remotely via a mobile device. The system can read gestures like the number of fingers, fist movements, and swipes using the Raspberry Pi with OpenCV and MediaPipe, which correctly recognizes hand landmarks to use the information to decode gestures. These gestures will be mapped to appliance functions such as switching devices ON/OFF and a timer that will automatically turn off appliances when it is completed. The interface of a mobile application enables the visualization of the status and timer time of the device in real-time to allow monitoring it remotely, even when gestures cannot be read. The system has been experimentally tested and shown to be able to make low latency and high consistency gesture recognition when the lighting is adequate. The solution provides a scalable design which can be expanded to more appliances and tied into larger IoT systems. In general, the smart home automation by this project becomes more convenient, hygienic, and accessible, being more intuitive, reliable, and user-centered.