Left and Right Hand Distinction for Multi-touch Displays

In the physical world we use both hands in a very distinctive manner. Much research has been dedicated to transfer this principle to the digital realm, including multi-touch interactive surfaces. However, without the possibility to reliably distinguish between hands, interaction design is very limited. We present an approach for enhancing multitouch systems based on diffuse illumination with left and right hand distinction. Using anatomical properties of the human hand we derive a simple empirical model and heuristics that, when fed into a decision tree classifier, enable real-time hand distinction for multi-touch applications.