A Defocus Based Novel Keyboard Design

Depth map estimation from Defocus is a computer vision technique which has wide applications such as constructing the $3D$ setup from $2D$ image(s), image refocusing and reconstructing $3D$ scenes. In this paper, we propose an application of Depth from Defocus to a novel keyboard design for detecting keystrokes. The proposed keyboard can be integrated with devices such as mobile, PC and tablets and can be generated by either printing on plain paper or by projection on a flat surface. The proposed design utilizes measured defocus together with a precalibrated relation between the defocus amount and the keyboard pattern to infer the depth, which, along with the azimuth position of the stroke identifies the key. As the proposed design does not require any other hardware besides a monocular camera, this makes the proposed approach a cost effective and feasible solution for a portable keyboard.