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Does anyone have any information to share regarding gesture detection using wrist movements (in contrast to swipe movements on the touchscreen) with Android Wear?

Is there official support for this in the API? If not, do you think this can be enabled via custom ROMs? Considering Android Wear is... well, Android, and Android has all the API functions to get data from the accelerometer of an Android based smartphone (and lots of helpful development sources), I assume it wouldn't be too hard? Or am I overlooking something?

Someone said the following at http://forum.xda-developers.com/android-wear/development/gesture-detection-using-wrist-t2936656

Use asus remote camera app for android wear. If you twist your watch it will take a picture with your smartphone camera!

To which I replied:

So wrist gesture detection is perfectly possible it seems? But can you or anyone else give me some additional background about Android Wear: Should I see Android Wear as a simple extension of the Android API? By which I mean: can I utilise all the Android API functions related to interpreting smartphone/tablet sensor data, provided the smartwatch has that sensor? (e.g accelerometer)

Since I was looking in this particular section related to Wearables (Remove the spaces: developer . android . com/training/building-wearables.html ) and I couldn't find any information about wrist gesture detection.
Is that simply because everything else from the Android API is automatically also applicable to smartwatch development?

(As one can tell, I'm quite new to mobile development.)

So far no answer. I'm now asking here in hope I get an answer...

Asgaro
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  • The closest out of the box is the tilt sensor, but you should be able to use the existing sensors (such as accelero, etc) to detect such movement. – Ali Naddaf Nov 14 '14 at 07:42

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Wrist gestures were added in Android Wear 5.1 however at the time of this response, Android Wear 5.1 is only available on the LG Watch Urbane. This update is expected on other Wear devices in the upcoming weeks

Two common wrist gestures are interpretted by the system as swipe up/down. You change the speed of the flick either away or towards you.

If you flick your wrist away from you quickly, then back slowly that will cause a scroll down.

If you turn your wrist slowly away then flick it quickly back towards you, this will scroll up.

You can see the wrist gestures in action here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=14&v=_R0qbB4hVbU

Fat Russell
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You can use the IBM Wearables SDK for Android to record and recognise all kinds of gestures not only wrist

for more info: https://github.com/ibm-wearables-sdk-for-mobile/ibm-wearables-android-sdk

Plus7
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Disclaimer: I am the author of the articles/code described below.

I just created an Accessibility Service that does exactly what you are describing: it gives you the ability to completely control your smartwatch using wrist gestures.

I created it for my own use (I can only use one of my hands, the one in which I wear the watch) and I can fully control it using wrist gestures.

https://jsalatas.ictpro.gr/handsfree-wear-a-wrist-gesture-input-method-for-android-based-smartwatches/

notice that in the current phase I'm not sure if the model that recognizes the wrist gestures can generalize or if it just recognizes my wrist gestures only.

jsalatas
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