IRIS: Wireless Ring for Vision-based Smart Home Interaction

TL;DR

IRIS is a novel wireless smart ring system equipped with vision, sensors, and connectivity, enabling context-aware, gesture-based smart home interactions that outperform voice commands in user preference and device recognition.

Contribution

This work introduces IRIS, the first compact, power-efficient wireless vision-enabled smart ring for smart home control, combining scene semantics and gesture recognition.

Findings

IRIS outperforms voice commands in user preference and control accuracy.

Participants preferred IRIS for device toggling, granular control, and social acceptability.

IRIS achieves 16-24 hours of operation on a single charge.

Abstract

Integrating cameras into wireless smart rings has been challenging due to size and power constraints. We introduce IRIS, the first wireless vision-enabled smart ring system for smart home interactions. Equipped with a camera, Bluetooth radio, inertial measurement unit (IMU), and an onboard battery, IRIS meets the small size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements for ring devices. IRIS is context-aware, adapting its gesture set to the detected device, and can last for 16-24 hours on a single charge. IRIS leverages the scene semantics to achieve instance-level device recognition. In a study involving 23 participants, IRIS consistently outpaced voice commands, with a higher proportion of participants expressing a preference for IRIS over voice commands regarding toggling a device's state, granular control, and social acceptability. Our work pushes the boundary of what is possible with ring form-factor devices, addressing system challenges and opening up novel interaction capabilities.