Initializing Markerless Tracking Using a Simple Hand Gesture

We introduce a technique to establish a coordinate system for augmented reality (AR) on tabletop environments. A user´s hand is tracked and the fingertips on the outstretched hand are detected, providing a camera pose estimation relative to the hand. As a user places the hand on the surface of a tabletop environment, the hand´s coordinate system is propagated to the environment, detecting distinctive image features in the scene. The features are tracked fast and robustly using optical flow. In this way, a new tabletop AR environment is set up without having to carry a marker or a sophisticated tracking system to the environment itself. We also demonstrate a proof-of-concept application for establishing a tabletop AR environment and recognizing a scene when detecting its features.