Real-time Hand Gesture Detection and Recognition using Boosted Classifiers and Active Learning

Abstract

In this article a robust and real-time hand gesture detection and recognition system for dynamic environments is proposed. The system is based on the use of boosted classifiers for the detection of hands and the recognition of gestures, together with the use of skin segmentation and hand tracking procedures. The main novelty of the proposed approach is the use of innovative training techniques - active learning and bootstrap -, which allow obtaining a much better performance than similar boosting-based systems, in terms of detection rate, number of false positives and processing time. In addition, the robustness of the system is increased due to the use of an adaptive skin model, a color-based hand tracking, and a multi-gesture classification tree. The system performance is validated in real video sequences.