Dr.Dissanayake Mudiyanselage Prashan Premaratne (BE Melb, PhD NUS, MIEE, MIEEE, MIEAust, MOSA)

[COLOMBO, SinhalaNet 2007.07.27 10:38AM] The curse of the missing remote control could become a thing of the past thanks to a new Australian technology which converts simple hand gestures into electronic commands that can operate devices such as televisions, video recorders and set top boxes.

By hooking up a working prototype using the technology to a TV and VCR, University of Wollongong researchers have operated both machines using suite of 10 different hand gestures. A small camera captures an image of the gesture and matches it to a pre-defined command which then instructs the device to do what it is told.

Waive Controller

Displaying, for instance, a closed first, an open palm, a thumbs up or a “pistol” gesture, users can relay instructions to turn machines on and off from standby mode, change channels, adjust the volume and play or stop the video.

The technology is the brainchild of Dr. Prashan Premaratne, a lecturer at the university’s School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering, and his former student, Quang Nguyen. Dr. Premaratne, who has published the findings in the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s Computer Vision Research Journal, says the prototype has shown itself to be 100 per cent accurate under normal lighting conditions and responsive to commands from a distance of 10 metres.

Dr.Dissanayake Mudiyanselage Prashan Premaratne (BE Melb, PhD NUS, MIEE, MIEEE, MIEAust, MOSA) who was born in Negombo in 1972 had his primary education with Primary School at Welimada and ended up with St.Thomas College, Bandarawela. Then he entered in to Bandarawela Central College where he excelled his GCE A/L in mathematical stream in 1991 with 4 “A” passes and ranked 4th in the Island. Thereafter in 1994 he was awarded an Australian Government full scholarship under John Crawford Scholarship Scheme to pursue his undergraduate studies at the University of Melbourne.

In 1997, he obtained his Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical & Electronics with Hons.) He was a Network Software Engineer at Network Software Development Division (NSDD) with Fujitsu (Singapore) Pty. Ltd from 1998-1999. In 1999 he was awarded a National University of Singapore Postgraduate Scholarship, National Science and Technology Board of Singapore award and Motorola Research grant to pursue Doctor of Philosophy degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He was awarded a PhD in 2001 for his work on Blind Deconvolution for Image Restoration. During this time he published 7 publications in IEEE/IEE accredited journals and conferences. He was also able to travel to USA twice, UK, Malaysia and Australia for conference presentations with generous support from Motorola Funds.

In March 2001, he joined the National University of Singapore as a Research Staff to investigate the signal processing applications in wearable computers. He joined the CRC for Sensor Signal and Information Processing (CSSIP) as a Research Fellow in September 2001 to join the Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) Imaging Project funded by DSTO, Adelaide, Australia. He became a Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide in January 2003. Since August 2003, he has been a lecturer in the School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Wollongong.

Dr.Premaratne got married to Ms.Vimarshana Bandaranayake an undergraduate at the Monash University in 1996 and blessed with a daughter, Savannah Mandakini in 2001. Dr.Premaratne is the youngest son of Mr.& Mrs. D.M.Premaratne of Bandarawela.

Dr. Premaratne says he is currently in talks with Sony Europe about the process which could also have uses in gaming applications. He hopes to see the technology included in devices such as a set top box incorporating a hard disc drive within the next three years and says it would add less than $50 to the cost of such a unit.

“I’m not really after any money from this invention,” Dr. Premaratne says. It’s more the recognition and the additional funding for some of my other projects that may flow from this. Dr. Premaratne says that while the prototype is based on 10 gestures and operates two devices, more gestures, and hence more functions and devices, could be added. Work on the technology has been in progress for two years. It began as a project with one of Dr. Premaratne’s students.