Indutivo: Contact-Based, Object-Driven Interactions with Inductive Sensing

We present Indutivo, a contact-based inductive sensing technique for contextual interactions. Our technique recognizes conductive objects (metallic primarily) that are commonly found in households and daily environments, as well as their individual movements when placed against the sensor. These movements include sliding, hinging, and rotation. We describe our sensing principle and how we designed the size, shape, and layout of our sensor coils to optimize sensitivity, sensing range, recognition and tracking accuracy. Through several studies, we also demonstrated the performance of our proposed sensing technique in environments with varying levels of noise and interference conditions. We conclude by presenting demo applications on a smartwatch, as well as insights and lessons we learned from our experience.