Virtual Keyboard Using Shadow Analysis

Traditional QWERTY keyboards provide a minimal but functional interface. However these keyboards are bulky and offer very little in terms of enhancements. In this age of miniaturization, where the size of laptops and desktops is becoming smaller, the traditional keyboard acts as a hindrance to further miniaturization. The Virtual Keyboard (VK), with its minimal physical form can provides a solution to this problem. Although other forms of Virtual Keyboards exist, they provide solutions using specialized devices such as 3D cameras. Due to this, a practical implementation of such keyboards is not feasible. The Virtual Keyboard that we propose uses only a standard web camera, with no additional hardware. This paper addresses problems with current Virtual Keyboard implementations and describes a novel technique, namely shadow analysis, to solve these problems.