Hand Waving Gesture Detection using a Far-infrared Sensor Array with Thermo-spatial Region of Interest

We propose a method of hand waving gesture detection using a far-infrared sensor array. The far-infrared sensor array captures the spatial distribution of temperature as a thermal image by detecting far-infrared waves emitted from heat sources. The advantage of the sensor is that it can capture human position and movement while protecting the privacy of the target individual. In addition, it works even at night-time without any light source. However, it is difficult to detect a gesture from a thermal image sequence captured by the sensor due to its low-resolution and noise. The problem is that the noise appears as a similar pattern as the gesture. Therefore, we introduce “Spatial Region of Interest (SRoI)” to focus on the region with motion. Also, to suppress the influence of other heat sources, we introduce “Thermal Region of Interest (TRoI)” to focus on the range of the human body temperature. In this paper, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the method through an experiment and discuss its result.