Hand pose estimation using multi-viewpoint silhouette images

This paper proposes a novel method for hand pose estimation that can be used for 3D free-form input interfaces. The aim of the method is to estimate all joint angles to manipulate objects in the virtual space. In this method, the hand regions are extracted from multiple images obtained by the multi-viewpoint camera system. By integrating multi-viewpoint silhouette images, a hand pose is reconstructed as a “voxel model”. Then all joint angles are estimated using three dimensional model fitting between hand model and voxel model. Following two experiments were performed: (1) the estimation of joint angles by the silhouette images from the hand-pose simulator, (2) the hand pose estimation using real hand images. The experimental results indicate the feasibility of the proposed algorithm for visionbased interfaces, though it requires faster implementation for real-time processing.