Vision-Based Hand Gesture Recognition for Human Computer Interaction: a Review

Abstract

Evolution of user interfaces shapes the change in the human-computer interaction. With the rapid emergence of threedimensional (3-D) applications; the need for a new type of interaction device arises as traditional devices such as mouse, keyboard, and joystick become inefficient and cumbersome within these virtual environments. Intuitive and naturalness characteristics of "Hand Gestures" in human computer interaction have been the driving force and motivation to develop an interaction device which can replace current unwieldy tools. This study is a survey on the methods of analyzing, modeling and recognizing hand gestures in the context of human-computer interaction. Taxonomy of the methods based on the applications that they have been developed for and the approaches that they have used to represent gestures is presented. Direction of future developments is also discussed. © 2008 IADIS.