A Colored Finger Tip-based Tracking Method for Continuous Hand Gesture Recognition

Hand gesture recognition system can be used for human-computer interaction (HCI). Proper hand segmentation from the background and other body parts of the video is the primary requirement for the design of a hand-gesture based application. These video frames can be captured from a low cost webcam (camera) for use in a vision based gesture recognition technique. This paper discusses about the continuous hand gesture recognition. The aim of this paper is to report a robust and efficient hand segmentation algorithm where a new method, wearing glove on the hand is utilized. After that a new idea called “Finger-Pen”, is developed by segmenting only one finger from the hand for proper tracking. In this technique only a finger tip is segmented in spite of the full hand part. Hence this technique allows the hand (excepting the segmented finger tip) to move freely during the tracking time also. Problems such as skin colour detection, complexity from large numbers of people in front of the camera, complex background removal and variable lighting condition are found to be efficiently handled by the system. Noise present in the segmented image due to dynamic background can be removed with the help of this adaptive technique which is found to be effective for the application conceived. KeywordsHand gesture recognition, Finger-pen, Segmentation, Tracking, Complex background.