A novel approach for dynamic hand gesture recognition using contour-based similarity images

A novel approach is proposed for the recognition of moving hand gestures based on the representation of hand motions as contour-based similarity images (CBSIs). The CBSI was constructed by calculating the similarity between hand contours in different frames. The input CBSI was then matched with CBSIs in the database to recognize the hand gesture. The proposed continuous hand gesture recognition algorithm can simultaneously divide the continuous gestures into disjointed gestures and recognize them. No restrictive assumptions were considered for the motion of the hand between the disjointed gestures. The proposed algorithm was tested using hand gestures from American Sign Language and the results showed a recognition rate of 91.3% for disjointed gestures and 90.4% for continuous gestures. The experimental results illustrate the efficiency of the algorithm for noisy videos.     

A Hilbert warping method for handwriting gesture recognition

We propose a novel sequence alignment algorithm for recognizing handwriting gestures by a camera. In the proposed method, an input image sequence is aligned to the reference sequences by phase-synchronization of analytic signals which are transformed from original feature values. A cumulative distance is calculated simultaneously with the alignment process, and then used for the classification. A major benefit of this method is that over-fitting to sequences of incorrect categories is restricted. The proposed method exhibited higher recognition accuracy in handwriting gesture recognition, compared with the conventional dynamic time warping method which explores optimal alignment results for all categories.     

Hybrid evolutionary neuro-fuzzy approach based on mutual adaptation for human gesture recognition

One of the most important techniques in human-robot communication is gesture recognition. If robots can read intentions from human gestures, the communication process will be smoother and more natural. Processing for gesture recognition typically consists of two parts: feature extraction and gesture classification. In most works, these are independently designed and evaluated by their own criteria. This paper proposes a hybrid approach based on mutual adaptation for human gesture recognition. We use a neuro-fuzzy system (NFS) for the classification of human gesture and apply an evolution strategy for parameter tuning and pruning of membership functions. Experimental results indicate the effectiveness of mutual adaptation in terms of the generalization.     

模板匹配技术在图像识别中的应用

在图像目标识别技术的研究应用中,模板匹配技术是其中一个重要的研究方向,它具有算法简单、计算量小以及识别率高的特点。介绍了几种改进的模板匹配技术在图像处理、模式识别等领域的应用,包括有条码识别、生物特征识别技术(人脸识别、指纹识别等)、车牌识别、字符识别、飞机识别等。     

基于手轮廓的深度图像手势识别方法

提出了一种新的手势识别方法,该方法从深度图像中提取手形轮廓,通过计算手形轮廓与轮廓形心点的距离,使用离散傅里叶变换获得手势的表观特征,引入径向基核的支持向量机识别手势。建立了一个常见的10种手势的数据集,测试获得了97.9%的识别率。     

User-independent gesture recognition by relative-motion extraction and discriminant analysis

We propose a new method for user-independent gesture recognition from time-varying images. The method uses relative-motion extraction and discriminant analysis for providing online learning/recognition abilities. Efficient and robust extraction of motion information is achieved. The method is computationally inexpensive which allows real-time operation on a personal computer. The performance of the proposed method has been tested with several data sets and good generalization abilities have been observed: it is robust to changes in background and illumination conditions, to users’ external appearance and changes in spatial location, and successfully copes with the non-uniformity of the performance speed of the gestures. No manual segmentation of any kind, or use of markers, etc. is necessary. Having the above-mentioned features, the method could be successfully used as a part of more refined human-computer interfaces. Bisser R. Raytchev: He received his BS and MS degrees in electronics from Tokai University, Japan, in 1995 and 1997 respectively. He is currently a doctoral student in electronics and information sciences at Tsukuba University, Japan. His research interests include biological and computer vision, pattern recognition and neural networks. Osamu Hasegawa, Ph.D.: He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Science University of Tokyo, in 1988, 1990 respectively. He received Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokyo, in 1993. Currently, he is a senior research scientist at the Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL), Tsukuba, Japan. His research interests include Computer Vision and Multi-modal Human Interface. Dr. Hasegawa is a member of the AAAI, the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, Japan (IEICE), Information Processing Society of Japan and others. Nobuyuki Otsu, Ph.D.: He received B.S., Mr. Eng. and Dr. Eng. in Mathematical Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1969, 1971, and 1981, respectively. Since he joined ETL in 1971, he has been engaged in theoretical research on pattern recognition, multivariate data analysis, and applications to image recognition in particular. After taking positions of Head of Mathematical Informatics Section (since 1985) and ETL Chief Senior Scientist (since 1990), he is currently Director of Machine Understanding Division since 1991, and concurrently a professor of the post graduate school of Tsukuba University since 1992. He has been involved in the Real World Computing program and directing the R&D of the project as Head of Real World Intelligence Center at ETL. Dr. Otsu is members of Behaviormetric Society and IEICE of Japan, etc.     

Kernel-based sparse representation for gesture recognition

In this paper, we propose a novel sparse representation based framework for classifying complicated human gestures captured as multi-variate time series (MTS). The novel feature extraction strategy, CovSVDK, can overcome the problem of inconsistent lengths among MTS data and is robust to the large variability within human gestures. Compared with PCA and LDA, the CovSVDK features are more effective in preserving discriminative information and are more efficient to compute over large-scale MTS datasets. In addition, we propose a new approach to kernelize sparse representation. Through kernelization, realized dictionary atoms are more separable for sparse coding algorithms and nonlinear relationships among data are conveniently transformed into linear relationships in the kernel space, which leads to more effective classification. Finally, the superiority of the proposed framework is demonstrated through extensive experiments.     

Human motions representation and recognition by directional motion history images

In this paper, we describe a technique for representing and recognizing human motions using directional motion history images. A motion history image is a single human motion image produced by superposing binarized successive motion image frames so that older frames may have smaller weights. It has, however, difficulty that the latest motion overwrites older motions, resulting in inexact motion representation and therefore incorrect recognition. To overcome this difficulty, we propose directional motion history images which describe a motion with respect to four directions of movement, i.e. up, down, right and left, employing optical flow. The directional motion history images are thus a set of four motion history images defined on four optical flow images. Experimental results show that the proposed technique achieves better performance in the recognition of human motions than the existent motion history images. This work was presented in part at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008     

Easy gesture recognition for Kinect

Recent progress in entertainment and gaming systems has brought more natural and intuitive human–computer interfaces to our lives. Innovative technologies, such as Xbox Kinect, enable the recognition of body gestures, which are a direct and expressive way of human communication. Although current development toolkits provide support to identify the position of several joints of the human body and to process the movements of the body parts, they actually lack a flexible and robust mechanism to perform high-level gesture recognition. In consequence, developers are still left with the time-consuming and tedious task of recognizing gestures by explicitly defining a set of conditions on the joint positions and movements of the body parts. This paper presents EasyGR (Easy Gesture Recognition), a tool based on machine learning algorithms that help to reduce the effort involved in gesture recognition. We evaluated EasyGR in the development of 7 gestures, involving 10 developers. We compared time consumed, code size, and the achieved quality of the developed gesture recognizers, with and without the support of EasyGR. The results have shown that our approach is practical and reduces the effort involved in implementing gesture recognizers with Kinect.     

一种基于模板匹配的手指静脉识别算法

相对于指纹识别等传统生物特征识别手段,手指静脉识别是一种新兴的具有较好应用前景的生物特征识别技术。本文设计了具有自适应光源系统的手指静脉采集仪,能够自动获得亮度均匀的手指静脉图像;提出了一种基于模板匹配的手指静脉识别算法,采用基于多方向灰度谷底搜寻方法提取手指静脉特征,然后将从同一手指多个图像中提取的静脉特征合成模板,并通过门限阈值消除模板中的随机差异信息。实验结果表明,运用本研究提出的基于模板匹配的手指静脉识别算法能有效提高识别准确性,具有99.10%的识别准确率和1.03%的等错误率。     

一种改进的模版匹配识别算法

通过对现有常用的几种模板匹配算法的分析与研究,提出了一种全区域特征加权模板匹配识别算法,它是对特征加权的模板匹配算法的一种改进。经过理论分析与实际测试,这种改进的识别算法进一步降低了字符的误识率。     

基于深度图像的多学习者姿态识别

在数字化学习场景中,人体姿态的识别有助于分析学习者的学习状态。提出了一种基于深度图像的多学习者姿态识别方法。首先通过Kinect的红外传感器获取包含深度信息的图像,利用深度图像进行人像-背景分离;然后提取人体的轮廓特征Hu矩;最后采用SVM分类器对轮廓特征进行分类和识别。实验结果表明,本方法能有效地识别多个学习者的举手、正坐和低头等姿态。     

基于RGB-D信息的动态手势识别方法*

针对现有的动态手势识别方法在复杂环境下,易受无关肤色、光照变化等因素的影响,识别率低,实时性差等问题进行了研究,提出一种的动态手势识别方法。该方法首先利用K均值聚类算法和YCr''Cb''（由YCrCb变换得到）椭圆肤色模型对RGB-D图像完成手势分割;然后将深度信息引入到传统卡尔曼滤波算法中,作为其跟踪参数之一,并在跟踪过程中对检测范围进行加窗处理;最后结合快速动态时间规整算法和突出关键特征点的思想,改进传统动态时间规整算法,并利用改进后的动态时间规整算法完成手势识别。实验表明：提出的手势识别方法,在复杂背景下的识别率较高（96.8±1.5%）,实时性较好（识别时间1.86±0.02ms）。     

Real-time fluid intake gesture recognition based on batteryless UHF RFID technology

Automatic fluid intake monitoring can be used to ensure adequate hydration in older people. In this study, a real-time fluid intake monitoring system based on the batteryless Ultra High Frequency Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is proposed. The system is simple, unobtrusive, low cost and maintenance-free. Despite the noisy RFID data stream, we demonstrate the efficacy of using a batteryless RFID enabled fluid container to recognize individual instances of drinking (i.e. drinking episodes), in the presence of non-drinking gestures. We conducted experiments with 10 young and 5 older volunteers and achieved F-scores of 87% and 79% for recognizing drinking episodes, respectively.     

HEGM: A hierarchical elastic graph matching for hand gesture recognition

A hierarchical scheme for elastic graph matching applied to hand gesture recognition is proposed. The proposed algorithm exploits the relative discriminatory capabilities of visual features scattered on the images, assigning the corresponding weights to each feature. A boosting algorithm is used to determine the structure of the hierarchy of a given graph. The graph is expressed by annotating the nodes of interest over the target object to form a bunch graph. Three annotation techniques, manual, semi-automatic, and automatic annotation are used to determine the position of the nodes. The scheme and the annotation approaches are applied to explore the hand gesture recognition performance. A number of filter banks are applied to hand gestures images to investigate the effect of using different feature representation approaches. Experimental results show that the hierarchical elastic graph matching (HEGM) approach classified the hand posture with a gesture recognition accuracy of 99.85% when visual features were extracted by utilizing the Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HOG) representation. The results also provide the performance measures from the aspect of recognition accuracy to matching benefits, node positions correlation and consistency on three annotation approaches, showing that the semi-automatic annotation method is more efficient and accurate than the other two methods.     

两种改进的模板匹配识别算法

在开发在线轮胎编码图像自动识别系统时,通过对现有常用的几种识别算法分析与研究,提出了两种改进的标准模板匹配识别算法,分别是基于特征加权的模板匹配算法和基于特征块的模板匹配算法,两种改进的算法都以抽取字符特征为基础,结合模糊原理进行识别,经过理论分析与实际测试,两种改进的识别算法都进一步提高了图像字符的识别率。     

A structure-preserved local matching approach for face recognition

In this paper, a novel local matching method called structure-preserved projections (SPP) is proposed for face recognition. Unlike most existing local matching methods which neglect the interactions of different sub-pattern sets during feature extraction, i.e., they assume different sub-pattern sets are independent; SPP takes the holistic context of the face into account and can preserve the configural structure of each face image in subspace. Moreover, the intrinsic manifold structure of the sub-pattern sets can also be preserved in our method. With SPP, all sub-patterns partitioned from the original face images are trained to obtain a unified subspace, in which recognition can be performed. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by extensive experiments on three standard face databases (Yale, Extended YaleB and PIE). Experimental results show that SPP outperforms other holistic and local matching methods.     

基于视觉的手势识别方法及其在数字信号处理器上的实现

针对手势识别算法复杂度高、在嵌入式系统上运行效率低的问题,提出一种以定点运算为主的基于形状特征的手势识别方法。采用内部最大圆法和圆截法提取特征点,在手掌内部寻找一个最大圆来获取掌心坐标;同时根据指尖的几何特征,在手形边缘以画圆的方式获取指尖,从而得到手势的手指数、方向和掌心位置等特征信息;再对这些特征信息进行分类并识别。通过对算法进行改进,完成了在数字信号处理器（DSP）上的移植。实验证明该方法对于不同人的手具有适应性,适合在DSP上处理,与其他基于形状特征的手势识别算法相比,平均识别率提高了1.6%~8.6%,计算机对算法的处理速度提高了2%,因此所提算法有利于嵌入式手势识别系统的实现,为嵌入式手势识别系统打下基础。     

Simultaneous gesture segmentation and recognition based on forward spotting accumulative HMMs

Existing gesture segmentations use the backward spotting scheme that first detects the end point, then traces back to the start point and sends the extracted gesture segment to the hidden Markov model (HMM) for gesture recognition. This makes an inevitable time delay between the gesture segmentation and recognition and is not appropriate for continuous gesture recognition. To solve this problem, we propose a forward spotting scheme that executes gesture segmentation and recognition simultaneously. The start and end points of gestures are determined by zero crossing from negative to positive (or from positive to negative) of a competitive differential observation probability that is defined by the difference of observation probability between the maximal gesture and the non-gesture. We also propose the sliding window and accumulative HMMs. The former is used to alleviate the effect of incomplete feature extraction on the observation probability and the latter improves the gesture recognition rate greatly by accepting all accumulated gesture segments between the start and end points and deciding the gesture type by a majority vote of all intermediate recognition results. We use the predetermined association mapping to determine the 3D articulation data, which reduces the feature extraction time greatly. We apply the proposed simultaneous gesture segmentation and recognition method to recognize the upper-body gestures for controlling the curtains and lights in a smart home environment. Experimental results show that the proposed method has a good recognition rate of 95.42% for continuously changing gestures.