Detecting the number of fingers raised and performing real time applications

First there was input of information or commands through keyboard, and then touch input was introduced. Now the big question is, What Next? The answer is Gesture Recognition. The best method for gesture recognition is through image processing techniques. In this paper a simple yet effective approach has been used to detect the number of fingers raised. The algorithm presented in the paper gives much better results that other algorithms used for the purpose. This paper used a 30 fps with up to 30 mega pixel camera. Furthermore, pre-processing is done to segment the hand region from its background. The proposed algorithm can be used for controlling basic applications such as image viewing etc.