SpeCam: Sensing surface color and material with the front-facing camera of a mobile device

Abstract

SpeCam is a lightweight surface color and material sensing approach for mobile devices which only uses the front-facing camera and the display as a multi-spectral light source. We leverage the natural use of mobile devices (placing it facedown) to detect the material underneath and therefore infer the location or placement of the device. SpeCam can then be used to support discreet micro-interactions to avoid the numerous distractions that users daily face with today's mobile devices. Our two-parts study shows that SpeCam can i) recognize colors in the HSB space with 10 degrees apart near the 3 dominant colors and 4 degrees otherwise and ii) 30 types of surface materials with 99% accuracy. These findings are further supported by a spectroscopy study. Finally, we suggest a series of applications based on simple mobile micro-interactions suitable for using the phone when placed face-down.