quences acquired with a webcam are first processed
to detect the presence of stretched fingers with a new
method based on iteratively analysing the distance
transform of the hand region. The result guides the
classification of a set of known hand poses, which is
based on a family of classifiers related to the hand
configuration. Gesture recognition is
achievedusing a syntactic approach making use of
linguistic gestures annotation formalized with a gen-
erative grammar.
We experimentally validated our method and
showed how it compares favorably with other ap-
proaches, while performing significantly better from
a computational standpoint.
As a first prototypical application, we developed a
picture browsing (see a screenshot in Fig. 1) in which
all the available functions are enabled by only the use
of hands.
Future improvements will be devoted to attenuate
the constraints required by the system (e.g. to over-
come problems for detecting hands). A straightfor-
ward development refers to extending the system so
to enroll two-handed gestures. From the standpoint
of the computational tools, the K-NN classifier can
be replaced with more refined machine learning meth-
ods, that may be beneficial especially as the number
of known hand poses increases. Also, users evalua-
tions will be taken into account to judge the ease in
the use of the interface. These aspects are object of
current investigations.
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