Demand for Touchless Interfaces in the Post-COVID World

The modern-day world is going through a digital transformation process, which triggers technological changes across all economy, commercial, and consumer-focused sectors. These changes include quick penetration of new machines and electronic tools, IoT (Internet of Things) devices, connected software, and other solutions influencing how we interact with technology.

User interfaces of electronic systems and devices change as well. Keyboards, touch panels, switches, graphic interfaces, and buttons are being increasingly replaced by touchless ways of interacting with machines, such as gesture recognition and voice control.

Today we’d like to talk in more detail about different types of touchless interfaces, the technologies that are powering them, and why they are finding more and more applications in other industries, with the increasing frequency being integrated into machines across various commercial and public spaces.

Demand for touchless interfaces post-COVID is on the rise

Touchless interfaces have multiple strengths over other kinds of human-machine interaction (HMI) and human-computer interaction (HCI) technologies. They enable faster access to information and decision-making processes, make interactions with machines and software systems easier, more responsive, safer and more secure.

The relevance of touchless interfaces, already significant, was fueled significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic. In today’s post-pandemic business environment, touchless technologies provide consumers with a safer way to interact with computer systems and machines, without spreading germs and other pathogens.

According to a survey conducted by Ernst & Young, the demand for touchless sensory interfaces has accelerated tremendously since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic: 59% of global consumers surveyed said they increasingly lean towards using contactless delivery and cashless payments in the post-COVID world.

Touchless interfaces applications

Organizations in various business fields are now looking to replace old-fashioned human-machine interaction (HMI) and human-computer interaction (HCI) with touchless interfaces.

Here are a few examples of common applications for touchless interfaces across industries:

• Voice assistants and facial recognition in mobile phones,
• Interfaces to interact with ATMs and banking terminals (facial recognition and NFC),
• Automatic translation of sign language,
• Gesture and voice recognition in smart buildings (elevators, entrances, bathrooms, etc.),
• Technologies for hygiene-sensitive areas
• Voice control and gesture recognition in automobiles and other vehicles,
• Gesture recognition in robotic devices and industrial machinery,
• VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) simulation training systems,
• Contactless sales solutions in retail businesses.

Types of touchless interfaces

Let’s talk in more detail about the most common types of touchless interfaces that are utilized most frequently today.

• Voice recognition

Voice recognition is one of the most common types of touchless interfaces implemented today. It allows to simplify interactions with software solutions and machines significantly, but also has certain drawbacks as the voice recognition interface is relatively complicated and can be challenging to operate properly. Voice control is easier to implement for systems that are limited to a fixed set of specific standard commands. Solutions that need to recognize a large number of words would normally require a complex speech recognition software. Voice recognition technology varies by product. Most often products based on this technology allow users to transcribe voice to text, set reminders, search the internet and ask for simple types of content, such as music, weather forecasts or traffic information.

• Hand gesture recognition

Hand gestures can be a convenient, relatively easy to implement and highly precise interface solution to control software systems and IoT devices, such as smart home electronics, robots, industrial machines, etc. One of the most common applications for hand gesture recognition today is switching the lights on and off in smart houses. In the automotive industry, hand gesture recognition allows drivers and passengers to interact with the vehicle — typically, to control the infotainment system without touching any buttons or screens.

• Face detection and recognition

Face detection and recognition are two distinct types of commonly used touchless interfaces. Naturally, the detection of face, signaling to a computer system about the presence of a person, is considerably easier to implement as it basically just requires an always-on camera with high enough resolution to identify a human face in a continuous video stream. The recognition of specific faces requires a more complex technology behind, normally supported by an AI-powered search and a database of people’s faces stored on a local machine or a remote server.

• Body gestures recognition

The recognition of human body gestures is a less common type of touchless interface than the recognition of hands or faces. Still, it also has several applications in specific business fields. Specifically, body gesture recognition can be a solution in training simulation systems for workers in manufacturing and various industrial environments. Fitness and sports training systems are other relevant applications for body gesture recognition interfaces.

• Direction of sight, age, face expression, and gender recognition

The most sophisticated types of touchless interfaces allow users to interact with computer systems by means of recognizing specific characteristics such as the line of sight of the person, facial expression (emotions recognition), gender, and age. As an example, such systems have tremendous potential to be used in retail and by other consumer-facing businesses to personalize offers and deliver highly targeted promotional content. For more details about this type of touchless interface, read our previous blog post on human movement technologies. 

Gesture recognition interface technologies

Different algorithms and models powering touchless interfaces exist. Let’s review the most common approaches utilized in gesture recognition as universal types of touchless interfaces used today.

Any gesture recognition system is built on two basic processes: the acquisition of input data and its recognition. The acquisition is converting physical human gestures into digital data. It is typically performed using all kinds of sensor-based devices, such as cameras, gesture-based controllers, motion detectors, wired gloves, etc.

The interpretation of acquired data is typically implemented with a number of different algorithms and approaches. Here are the most common ones:

• 3D model-based algorithms

3D model-based algorithms rely on using volumetric or skeletal models created from complex three-dimensional surfaces. In some cases, volumetric and skeletal models are used in combination with each other.

• Electromyography-based algorithms

Electromyography (EMG) is a technology that allows the recording of electrical signals produced by muscle movements inside the human body. The EMG data is typically recorded either by sophisticated cameras able to detect muscle movement or by electrodes placed directly on the skin.

• Skeletal-based algorithms

Skeletal-based models are a simpler and cheaper alternative to 3D model-based algorithms. This approach creates a virtual skeletal representation of the person’s body by digitally mapping all the main segments of the skeleton and analyzing the positioning of the body parts based on this model.

• Appearance-based models

Appearance-based models rely on creating a representation of the body or, more frequently, body parts based on two-dimensional templates of the human body parts. Such models are mostly used for hand gesture detection and recognition, so they typically require templates of a human hand with a selection of the most basic hand gestures.

Summary

The demand for touchless interfaces in the modern world is growing quickly, fueled by the post-COVID precautions and the need to integrate new ways of interacting with computers, machines, robots, and software systems across markets and industries, from consumer electronics and industrial automation to construction, healthcare, education, and entertainment industry. 

The design and integration of a touchless interface requires a common effort of a high-profile team of embedded systems engineers, ergonomic specialists, software developers, and other experts.

The Tauro Technologies’ team of electronic engineers and designers has a proven track record of successfully designing custom hardware for various kinds of embedded systems and IoT products in multiple technology fields. Drawing on the specific needs of our clients, we select and apply various engineering methods to electronic product development and manufacturing in order to achieve the desired result. Utilizing our in-house expertise in assembly and debugging of embedded systems and touchless interfaces, we are able to build and evaluate your prototypes before high-volume manufacturing, rapidly and cost-efficiently.

Interested to know more? Get in touch with us for details.