Virtual Piano

Abstract

Recently, Microsoft has released the Kinect in X-box 360. It seems that nowadays we do not need to use any controller to play a game. Keyboard and mouse are the major input devices. Can we use our hand as an input device to control the computer? Can we do something like Kinect but a computer version? If we can do it, this method can apply to some applications and replace the keyboard. User may feel much more convenient. Our objective of the project is to find out a new input method and apply on an application. Based on our objective, I try to develop a virtual piano which allows users to use their hands to control the virtual piano keyboard directly. In this project I would use Visual Studio 2008, programming language is C++ and an opencv library for the implementation. OpenCv library is used for face detection; it is good at finding some features. I use this library to find out fingertips. Since there are only few references about using OpenCv to find a hand and fingertips, I need to study many methods to find out the best way to recognize fingertips. Now my system can recognize one hand’s fingertips. This is the most difficult part of the project. You can treat this project is not only a software, but also a research on the fingertips detection. I hope one day, people can use this software to practice piano skill if they do not have enough money to buy one or place to locate a piano.