Vision Based Hand Gesture Recognition for Indian Sign Languages

Sign Language is a language which uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning by simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands to fluently express one's thoughts / communicate with others and is commonly used by the physically impaired people who cannot speak or hear. Automatic Sign Language system requires fast and accurate techniques for identifying static signs or a sequence of produced signs to help interpret their correct meaning. Major component of a Sign Language is Hand Gesture Recognition. Gestures are powerful means of communication among humans. It may be based on hand, body, lip movements (speech expression), eye movements, facial expression (mood/emotions) of the human. Among all, hand gesture is the easiest and most natural way of communication between people. With the latest advances in the field of computer vision, image processing and pattern recognition, real -time vision-based hand gesture classification is belonging more and more feasible for human-computer interaction in virtual environments. Hand gestures are an intuitive yet powerful communication modality which has not been fully explored for Human Computer Interaction. Sign language study shows that among various gesture communication modalities, hand gesture plays significant role. This research aim towards working on hand gesture recognition for sign language interpretation as a HCI application.