Mao Zhi-Hong, Lee Heung-No, Sclabassi Robert J, Sun Mingui
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.
IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2009 May;56(5):1535-45. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2008.2011817. Epub 2009 Jan 23.
Due to its large number of degrees of freedom and extensive connection to the brain, the human hand has been used to create channels of communication for a variety of human-machine systems. However, a fundamental question about the hand channel is still unanswered: what is its information capacity? This study aims to provide quantitative indication of effectiveness of the hand as a communication channel. We estimated that per gesture, the thumb and the index finger may deliver at most 10 and 7 bits of information, respectively. Based on this, we derived an upper bound for the information capacity of the hand in gesture-based communication: 150 b/s. Knowing this bound is critical to evaluating the potential and limitation of the hand channel for various forms of human-machine interactions.
由于人类手部具有大量自由度且与大脑广泛相连，它已被用于为各种人机系统创建通信渠道。然而，关于手部通道仍有一个基本问题未得到解答：其信息容量是多少？本研究旨在提供手部作为通信渠道有效性的定量指标。我们估计，每个手势中，拇指和食指最多可分别传递10比特和7比特的信息。基于此，我们得出了基于手势通信中手部信息容量的上限：150比特/秒。了解这一上限对于评估手部通道在各种形式人机交互中的潜力和局限性至关重要。
