mmHand: Toward Pixel-Level-Accuracy Hand Localization Using a Single Commodity mmWave Device

The hand localization problem has been a longstanding focus due to its many applications. The task involves modeling the hand as a singular point and determining its position within a defined coordinate system. However, due to data modality limitations, existing hand localization technologies face several challenges. For example, vision-based localization raises privacy concerns, while wearable-based methods compromise user comfort. In this article, we introduce mmHand, a new device-free, privacy-preserving dynamic hand localization system with pixel-level accuracy, using a single commodity mmWave device. We first propose a mmImage generation tool to fully extract spatial information from raw mmWave data and introduce a novel 2-D image-format representation of mmWave data. Next, we design a framework that provides a new quality evaluation method and pixel space labeling for the mmWave data. Finally, we present a cross-modality spatial feature-enhanced model with high spatial feature extraction capabilities, which can accurately localize hand positions at the pixel level in the mmWave radar U-V pixel coordinate system. We evaluate the system with experiments on 12 subjects in three scenarios, and the results across four metrics demonstrate the effectiveness of our hand localization system.