Hand Posture Prediction for Designing Position of Push-Button Switches on a Steering Wheel

This paper proposes a method using a limited number of measured postures to estimate the hand posture necessary to push a button on an automobile steering wheel by the thumb tip. The estimation is divided into two processes. First, the approximate posture to push a button is calculated by interpolation using measured reference postures. Then, the posture estimate is optimized so that the thumb tip reaches a given goal as nearly as possible. The accuracy of the proposed method is validated by comparing the estimated postures with measured ones that are not used as reference postures.