Gesture recognition

Gestures being one of the most prominent parameters in human-computer interaction form the future in technology. Everyone uses gestures in their day-to-day communication with other beings to reinforce the information that they convey through speech, as well as to convey meaning that is difficult to convey through speech alone. Hence, making human-computer interaction natural, computers must recognize gestures additionally along with speech. Furthermore, gesture recognition is also a necessity for the virtual reality environments, where the environment is manipulated by the user with gestures.

With the advent of technology, where the world is getting heavily automated, any singular method for hand gesture recognition is not suitable for every application; each gesture-recognition algorithm relies on users’ cultural background, area of application, and environment. These applications can be divided into four main classes—medical systems and assistive technologies; crisis management and disaster relief; entertainment; and human-robot interaction.

Controlling distribution of resources in hospitals and visualization displays, interaction with medical instrumentation, providing the user with sterility which is needed to help avoid spreading of infection, and helping handicapped people with their rehabilitation therapy are a few such applications. Control of home devices or appliances for physically handicapped or elderly users with less or impaired mobility. It is also used as a sign language electronic interpreter. Exploration of massive complex data sets and manipulation of images through intuitive human actions benefit from 3D interaction, rather than traditional 2D methods which are constrained, the application of which can be seen in smart devices is another example.

In the field of entertainment, virtual reality and gaming technology also, the wearable devices involving gesture recognition are heavily employed.

Work in progress

With technology growing exponentially and the world becoming more automated, with smart devices being used in every field of life, it is important to make life easy even for the specially- abled people. The deaf and dumb have always been dependent on a human interpreter for communication. A smart device which would allow them to communicate with the world independently would be a breakthrough, making their life easier. A hand gesture recognizing device can be used as a sign language interpreter. This is possible by using video processing techniques to capture these gestures and convert them to speech or text.

Publication

1. Real-time efficient detection in Vision Based Static Hand Gesture Recognition, "Amrutnarayan Panigrahi, Jaganath Prasad Mohanty, Ayaskanta Swain, Kamalakanta Mahapatra" , iSES 2018, Hyderabad, India.