A Complex Non-Contact Bio-Instrumental System

One of the major challenges that the human computer interface (HCI) faces nowadays is that of identifying a subject’s state, in a real world environment, characterized mainly by its being: open-recorded, event-elicited, and internal emotional state-driven (Picard, Vyzas, & Healey , 2001). The main requirement for such system regards the noninvasive character of their working principle. Subsequently, in order to improve communication in HCI systems or to asses the human state, the analysis of the body language could be a solution. Thus, a “sensitive computer” could use the body movements and the positions of the body in order to assess the state of a person (e.g., confusion, illness, nervousness, lack of attention, motor fatigue, agitation, etc.). In the rehabilitation process, the measurements of the motion impairments are very important because they can quantify the patient’s recovering between two consecutive medical sessions. Nowadays, this type of motion analysis is achieved by physicians through visual observation of the patient during some standard tests. As a result, the physician subjectivism is introduced and, much more, when different physicians evaluate the same patient, the reproducibility of the measurements becomes a difficult task. To respond to the previously presented requirements in different application fields, a noncontact laser system was introduced by the authors (Cracan, Teodoru, & Dobrea, 2005; Dobrea, 2002; Dobrea, Cracan & Teodoru, 2005; Dobrea & Serban, 2005). Here, we present the implementation of an independent system constructed as a self-contained unit that can be further integrated in much more complex and intelligent structures, together with new possible applications. This article proposes a new real-time, noncontact system able to: • Acquire and interpret the subject’s body language, • Recognize static hand signs, and • Provide physicians with a quantitative tool to monitor the evolution of the Parkinson Disease.