Humantenna: Using the Body as an Antenna for Real-Time Whole-Body Interaction

Humantenna senses whole-body gestures without any instrumentation to the environment and only minimal instrumentation to the user. Leveraging the existing electromagnetic noise coming from appliances and power lines, the human body acts as an antenna and receives this noise, which this project uses as its signal. By measuring the voltage over time over one surface of the body, we are able to classify which gesture the user is performing. Humantenna can also identify the location of the user as well as the gestures being performed. This location and user information can be used for a variety of context aware ubiquitous computer applications.