Towards a gesture based human-machine interface: Fast 3D tracking of the human fingers on high speed smart camera computers

Rich multimedia and 3D graphical UIs need new methods for efficient input. Current mainstream human-machine interfaces are the keyboard and the mouse but touch based ones are emerging recently. Some more esoteric counterparts are also used mainly in virtual reality systems. These current devices has some properties which make them unusable (wires attached or gloves or other markers must be worn) and lacking some others (touch less and distant control). Our project aims to develop a system based on 3D visual recognition of human hand gestures for both home and industrial applications. In this paper we present the fundamental part of this system: the 3D finger tracking algorithm and its implementation properties on smart camera systems.