3D hand posture recognition from small unlabeled point sets

This paper is concerned with the evaluation and comparison of several methods for the classification and recognition of static hand postures from small unlabeled point sets corresponding to physical landmarks, e.g. reflective marker positions in a motion capture environment. We compare various classification algorithms based upon multiple interpretations and feature transformations of the point sets, including those based upon aggregate features (e.g. mean) and a pseudo-rasterization of the space. We find aggregate feature classifiers to be balanced across multiple users but relatively limited in maximum achievable accuracy. Certain classifiers based upon the pseudo-rasterization performed best among tested classification algorithms. The inherent difficulty in classifying certain users leads us to conclude that online learning may be necessary for the recognition of natural gestures.