Skin Locus Based Skin Detection for Gesture Recognition

The paper describes ongoing research in computer vision based gestural interfaces. The aim of the research is to develop a novel, multi-user gesture recognition system that addresses key factors of human computer interaction; the latter is not fully addressed in computer vision research. The focus of current work has been on efficient and accurate skin colour detection. Skin colour based segmentation for computer vision applications involving human users has received considerable attention over the years. One of the popular techniques is physics based skin colour locus in chromaticity space. The skin distribution in chromaticity space has shown robustness to changing illumination conditions. The paper proposes a technique based on skin samples for identifying skin locus, this does not require knowledge of camera parameters and correlated colour temperature of the illuminant. The paper also evaluates the potential for using skin locus based segmentation for an indoor gesture recognition system; previous studies have mainly focussed on face detection and face tracking.