RFIPad: Enabling Cost-efficient and Device-free In-air Handwriting using Passive Tags

An important function of smart environments is the ubiquitous access of computing devices. In public areas such as hospitals, libraries, and airports, people may want to interact with nearby computing systems to get information, such as directions to a hospital room, locations of books, and flight departure/ arrival information. Touch screen based displays and kiosks, which are commonly used today, may incur extra hardware cost or even possible germ and bacteria infection. This work provides a new solution: users can make queries and inputs by performing in-air handwriting to an array of passive RFID tags, named RFIPad. This input method does not require human hands to carry any device and hence is convenient for applications in public areas. Besides the mobile and contactless property, this system is a cost-efficient extension to current RFID systems: an existing reader can monitor multiple RFIPads while performing its regular applications such as identification and tracking. We implement a prototype of RFIPad using commercial off-the-shelf UHF RFID devices. Experimental results show that RFIPad achieves > 91% accuracy in recognizing basic touchscreen operations and English letters.