Sydney (Australia) - The Virtual and Interactive Simulations department at Macquarie University in Sydney is looking to help handicapped computer users by incorporating gesture recognition. The system involves body position analysis as well as assisted input, such as data gloves.


Gesture recognition has been seen in movies like Minority Report (staring Tom Cruise), and more recently The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) (staring Keanu Reeves). In these movies, users do not touch a screen, but interact with the air via hand movements.

The movements on film were typically echoed by something visible before them, like a mid-air hologram. While holograms are not yet possible with current technology, the idea of having gesture recognition aid both regular and handicapped users for regular computer use is increasing. Also, the progression in input seems straight-forward: keyboard/mouse, light-pen, touch, multi-touch, gesture.

Manolya Kavakli of Macquarie University explains that standard input devices (like keyboard and mouse), do not closely mimic natural hand motions such as drawing and sketching. She also says these devices have not been developed for ergonomic use, nor for the handicapped.

Kavakli states:

"We developed two gesture recognition systems: DESigning In virtual Reality (DesIRe) and DRiving for disabled (DRive). DesIRe allows any user to control dynamically in real-time simulators or other programs. DRive allows a quadriplegic person to control a car interface using input from just two LEDs on an over-shoulder garment. For more precise gestures, a DataGlove user can gesture using their fingers.

The system architecture include the following components: Vizard Virtual Reality Toolkit, an immersive projection system (VISOR), an optical tracking system (specifically the Precision Position Tracker (PPT) system) and a data input system, Kavakli explains. The DataGlove input is quite simplistic at the moment, but future work will lead to an increase in sensitivity to specific gestures, such as grasping, strumming, stroking, and other hand movements."

The research on gesture recognition appears in an article entitled "Gesture recognition in virtual reality," by Manolya Kavakli in International J. Arts and Technology, 2008, volume 1, pages 215-229.

not fiction!

Dec 19, 2008 10:55     

new generation of processor are allowing this to be a reality: http://www.maximumpc.com/artic...p_nehalem Francois
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Tom Cruise WTF?

Dec 19, 2008 14:27     

Why is there a picture of Tom Cruise on this article? [The reference to Minority Report and his use of gesture input in that movie. -Rick]
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@Tom Cruise WTF

Dec 20, 2008 16:36     

Miniority Report!!! You know the hand thing that he did. What, you don't watch movies?
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I'm working on something like that

Dec 21, 2008 13:57     

My current research is related to something like this. But I'm tackling the problem of "hand gesture/posture sign recognition for sign language translation" I'm also using bare hand with a single camera. But the challenges are really high. Its good to see people tackling this research problem..
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Gesture Input

Mar 15, 2009 07:38     

A gesture input system that is simple and easy to use is called PIDT. With one hand, five fingers and six easy gestures anyone can text message using PIDT. The patented method is quite intuitive and easy to learn, perform, recognize and retain. Try it for yourself. One video on youtube is Learn PIDT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FTw_GFy6E0 Another video is PIDT Reinvents and Simplifies Fingerspelling http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n565BeLCQT8&feature=channel For more information, visit www.pidt.org

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