A Gesture Recognition Interface for a Set-Top Box

As the service providers are integrating internet and broadcast channels, the functionality of a set-top box has increased to much more than a simple multiplexer and decoder of television channels. The functionality offered by the ´remote control´ is insufficient. Gesture recognition offers a useful solution to this problem as the functionality of such a system can be increased by a simple firmware upgrade over the network for the existing system. Also having a good seamless interface is a good selling point and the product will attract a lot of attention. Building such a system is challenging because its performance has to be real time and the cost of it should not be much more than the traditional remote control. In this paper we have developed such a system using a single CMOS sensor that is capable of recognizing hand gestures in the range of 0.5m-6m distance in a variety of backgrounds in order to keep its operational range as close as possible to the remote control. There is also no need for any calibration of the system before using it. We have benchmarked its performance on many of the popular embedded processors available in the market and the results are promising.