HoloHands: Kinect Control of Optical Tweezers

Abstract

The increasing number of applications for holographic manipulation techniques has sparked the development of more accessible control interfaces. Here, we describe a holographic optical tweezers experiment that is controlled by gestures which are detected by a Microsoft Kinect. We demonstrate that this technique can be used to calibrate the tweezers using the Stokes Drag method and compare this to automated calibrations. We also show that multiple particle manipulation can be handled. This is a promising new line of research for gesture-based control that could find applications in a wide variety of experimental situations.