Multi-touch surface based on RGBD camera

The popularity of interactive surfaces is increasing because of their natural and intuitive usage. Adding 3D multi-point interaction capabilities to an arbitrary surface creates numerous additional possibilities in fields ranging from marketing to medicine. Interactive tables are nowadays present in numerous museums, schools and companies. With the advent of low-cost RGBD cameras, thee-dimensional surfaces are slowly emerging as well, attracting even more attention. This paper presents an affordable system for 3D human-computer interaction using a RGBD camera that is capable of detecting and tracking user's fingertips in 3D space. The system is evaluated in terms of accuracy, response time, CPU usage, and user experience. The results of the evaluation show that such low-cost systems are already a viable alternative to other multi-touch technologies and also present interesting new ways of interaction with a surface-based interfaces.