SEPO: Selecting by Pointing as an Intuitive Human-Robot Command Interface

Pointing to indicate direction or position is one of the intuitive communication mechanisms used by humans in all life stages. Our aim is to develop a natural human-robot command interface using pointing gestures for human-robot interaction (HRI). We propose an interface based on the Kinect sensor for selecting by pointing (SEPO) in a 3D real-world situation, where the user points to a target object or location and the interface returns the 3D position coordinates of the target. Through our interface we perform three experiments to study precision and accuracy of human pointing in typical household scenarios: pointing to a "wall", pointing to a "table", and pointing to a "floor". Our results prove that the proposed SEPO interface enables users to point and select objects with an average 3D position accuracy of 9.6 cm in household situations.