Human computer interface based on hand gesture recognition

Abstract

With the improvement of multimedia technologies such as broadband-enabled HDTV, video on demand and internet TV, the computer and the TV are merging to become a single device. Moreover the previously cited technologies as well as DVD or Blu-ray can provide menu navigation and interactive content. The growing interest in video conferencing led to the integration of the webcam in different devices such as laptop, cell phones and even the TV set. Our approach is to directly use an embedded webcam to remotely control a TV set using hand gestures. Using specific gestures, a user is able to control the TV. A dedicated interface can then be used to select a TV channel, adjust volume or browse videos from an online streaming server. This approach leads to several challenges. The first is the use of a simple webcam which leads to a vision based system. From the single webcam, we need to recognize the hand and identify its gesture or trajectory. A TV set is usually installed in a living room which implies constraints such as a potentially moving background and luminance change. These issues will be further discussed as well as the methods developed to resolve them. Video browsing is one example of the use of gesture recognition. To illustrate another application, we developed a simple game controlled by hand gestures. The emergence of 3D TVs is allowing the development of 3D video conferencing. Therefore we also consider the use of a stereo camera to recognize hand gesture.