Gesture Controlled Vehicle using Kinect Sensor
With the development of technology, robots are gradually entering in our life. Its applications are present in education, home assistance, medical etc. Various applications include specific control strategies and controllers. In particular, gesture controlled devices with different complexity is sti
2025-06-28 16:32:45 - Adil Khan
Gesture Controlled Vehicle using Kinect Sensor
Project Area of Specialization RoboticsProject SummaryWith the development of technology, robots are gradually entering in our life. Its applications are present in education, home assistance, medical etc. Various applications include specific control strategies and controllers. In particular, gesture controlled devices with different complexity is still considered as challenging task. There are many distinctive ways to interact with a robot. Robots are most frequently controlled employing a wired, wirelessly or autonomously. The most effortless way to control a robot is employing a controller associated physically to the robot using wires or a cable. Those robots ordinarily have no intelligence. Wireless Infrared transmitters and receivers are utilized for interacting with robots without any wire. Another way is to utilize the microcontroller in your robot to its full potential and program it to respond to input from its sensors. Advanced social robots are planned to connected with people by making use of a variety of sensors. A microcontroller is considered the "brain" of a robot and permits you to program your robot’s behavior. In this context sensor like Kinect Sensors, have provided new opportunities for human-robot interaction. Kinect can recognize different gestures performed by human, hence simplifying the interaction process. In this way different devices can be controlled easily. The key enabling innovation is human body language understanding. The computer first of all will understand the commands given by the user in the form of gestures using his body movement. The purpose is that human user can interact with robots using body language.
Project ObjectivesOur objective of this project is to design a vehicle that can be controlled wirelessly by the gestures performed by human body as well as will avoid the vehicle from crashing of obstacles in their path during the movement.
Project Implementation MethodWe use Kinect Sensor to detect our gestures. Kinect sensor uses its depth sensors for this purpose. Once it tracks our gestures, it will send the signal to PC through USB cable. In PC, we have MATLAB 2013 installed in it. We have downloaded Kinect toolbox in MATLAB 2013.This toolkit is important to acquire the depth data in MATLAB. The MATLAB will access the tracked data and convert it to angels. The angels are basically angels of our hand which is tracked by Kinect and we will assign a range of angels to some variables in ARDUINO. For wireless sending of data from PC to Arduino, we’ll use WIFI Module.
The WIFI Module will send signals and Arduino will receive it. The code to receive the processed data is already written on Arduino.
We’ll use Ultrasonic Sensor to detect any obstacle. This ultrasonic sensor will continuously send signals to Arduino after measuring the distance from any hurdle in the path.
Arduino will save the received data in variables and after processing the data according to the program written on it, it will operate DC Motors for the movement of vehicle according to the gesture given by user in front of Kinect Sensor. But Arduino is capable to giving a limited current to motors, in result the motors will not work. For this, we’ll use Motor Driver Circuit.
The purpose of Motor Driver is that it will give enough current to drive the motors. We’ll use external power supply in the form of DC Battery to power up Arduino, Motor Driver and Ultrasonic sensor.
We’ll use an IP camera, which will be mounted on car and will be connected to our PC’s IP address to keep an eye on car.
Benefits of the ProjectOur project “Gesture Controlled Vehicle using Kinect Sensor” is basically a prototype and can be enhanced to use in our daily life in many different applications. Few of them are discussed here:
Wireless Gesture Controlled Robots or Vehicles are very useful in industries where human lives are more important than performance and money. For example, in Firefighter squad, if we take work from these types of robots, which we can control by our signs and body language instead of humans then, maybe we have to compromise on performance but at least we can lower the risk of human life.
Similarly, if we use this project in military or surveillance field, where high level of spying is needed, then we can also lower the risk of lives.
Moreover, we can use this prototype in home automation fields. For example, in home automation, if we want to perform some tasks by going at specific place inside our homes like opening the door. So, we just have to give the gesture to sensor by sitting on one place to perform all the tasks like this.
Technical Details of Final DeliverableOur final deliverable is a vehicle that can be controlled by gestures of our hands.Following are some outcomes of our project:
- Operating Kinect Sensor through MATLAB for detecting body movement.
- Transfer of Kinect detected movement to Arduino through wireless means.
- Control of vehicle using Hand Gestures through Arduino and Kinect for its operation.
| Item Name | Type | No. of Units | Per Unit Cost (in Rs) | Total (in Rs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total in (Rs) | 22600 | |||
| Kinect Sensor | Equipment | 1 | 15000 | 15000 |
| Arduino UNO | Equipment | 1 | 850 | 850 |
| Motor Driver Circuit | Equipment | 1 | 300 | 300 |
| RC Vehicle | Equipment | 1 | 3000 | 3000 |
| Ultrasonic Sensor | Equipment | 1 | 200 | 200 |
| WIFI Module | Equipment | 1 | 250 | 250 |
| IP Camera | Equipment | 1 | 3000 | 3000 |