AIMtechKinect: A Kinect Based Interaction-Oriented Gesture Recognition System Designed for Students with Severe Intellectual Disabilities

Microsoft Kinect sensors nowadays are widely used for real-time controller-free virtual reality (VR) interactions. However, there has been limited research on interaction-oriented analysis of motion data captured by Kinect from those who suffer from both intellectual and physical challenges. In this paper, a software framework based on Kinect is proposed to support a psycho-educational program (InSPAL) in a special school setting, which aims to enable students with severe intellectual disabilities (SID) to interact with the educational VR content and through which their pre-learning skills could be enhanced. Also, algorithms embedded in this framework are designed and modified in order to overcome limitations of the sensor and challenges originated from unique features of SID students´ body movement.