The built-in orientation and motion sensors of smartphones along with their wireless communication abilities are utilized to control connected IoT devices from any place in a room, by pointing at them with the smartphone in the hand. The information of which device is targeted will be derived from the user's actual location, the spatial orientation of the smartphone and pre-knowledge regarding the positions of devices. Chosen devices are remotely operated with simple mid-air gestures performed with the smartphone. The feasibility of this cost-effective approach is assessed by user experiments. The continuous readings of the smartphone's inclination, rotation and magnetic field sensors are recorded with a dedicated freeware app. An algorithm combines the sensor readings to deliver the actual spatial orientation. Our preliminary experiments with different smartphone models and several users show that pointing at defined positions and performing gestures with a smartphone in the user's hand can be accurately sensed without latency and with small deviations of the orientation measurements in the range of up to 5 degrees, indicating the feasibility of this novel approach.    «

The built-in orientation and motion sensors of smartphones along with their wireless communication abilities are utilized to control connected IoT devices from any place in a room, by pointing at them with the smartphone in the hand. The information of which device is targeted will be derived from the user's actual location, the spatial orientation of the smartphone and pre-knowledge regarding the positions of devices. Chosen devices are remotely operated with simple mid-air gestures performed w...    »