Detection of a pointing target in a real environment

For most of the existing pointing systems proposed in the past, the pointing target was limited to a specific surface in the space, usually an object on a 2-D screen. This paper presents a new solution for estimating the pointing target inside a 3-D space, such as a room. A special set of stereo cameras acquires images and depth maps from the entire environment. Using a background subtraction method, our system detects the foreground pixels, analyzes them and extracts the user´s face and hand regions. Considering that the pointing direction is the straight line connecting the face and the hand, the pointing target can be seen as the intersection of that line with the 3-D model of the environment, allowing the calculation and the display of the person´s viewpoint.