Real-time detection of hand gestures

Abstract

This paper presents one of the approaches to the gesture recognition problem, which might be valuable in development of social robots, companions for deaf-mute people or in design of new control methods. A universal PC application for gesture recognition in image sequence acquired from a simple USB camera in real-time was made. The application recognises hand gestures which indicate chosen letters from the sign language alphabet and can be adjusted to any hand-shape pattern. The algorithm is resistant to most lighting changes, different sizes and shapes of users' hands and background patterns.