Gesture recognition is a topic in computer science and language technology with the goal of interpreting human gestures via mathematical algorithms. Gestures can originate from any bodily motion or state but commonly originate from the face or hand. Current focuses in the field include emotion recognition from the face and hand gesture recognition. Many approaches have been made using cameras and computer vision algorithms to interpret sign language. However, the identification and recognition of posture, gait, proxemics, and human behaviors is also the subject of gesture recognition techniques.
Gesture recognition can be seen as a way for computers to begin to understand human body language, thus building a richer bridge between machines and humans than primitive text user interfaces or even GUIs (graphical user interfaces), which still limit the majority of input to keyboard and mouse.
Gesture recognition enables humans to communicate with the machine (HMI) and interact naturally without any mechanical devices. Using the concept of gesture recognition, it is possible to point a finger at the computer screen so that the cursor will move accordingly. This could potentially make conventional input devices such as mouse, keyboards and even touch-screens redundant.
Although this technology is still in its infancy, applications are beginning to appear. Flutter, a start-up in Palo Alto, California, is allowing anyone with a Mac or Windows computer and webcam to download an application that allows them to control music and video applications such as Spotify, iTunes, Windows Media Player, QuickTime, and VLC using gestures.
Gesture recognition can be conducted with techniques from computer vision and image processing.
The literature includes ongoing work in the computer vision field on capturing gestures or more general human pose and movements by cameras connected to a computer.
Gesture recognition and pen computing: The term gesture recognition has been used to refer more narrowly to non-text-input handwriting symbols, such as inking on a graphics tablet, multi-touch gestures, and mouse gesture recognition. This is computer interaction through the drawing of symbols with a pointing device cursor. (see Pen computing)
Read more about Gesture Recognition: Gesture Types, Uses, Input Devices, Algorithms, Challenges
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