Depth Camera in Human-Computer Interaction: An Overview

With the continuous development of multimedia technology, simple two-dimensional(2D) scenes have already can´t meet the needs of people´s requirements because people want a more direct reflection on the real world. As a newly developing distance measuring hardware, the depth camera technology opens a new epoch for three-dimensional(3D) geometric information acquisition. A plenty of applications like geometry reconstruction, mixed reality, gesture reorganization etc. are all depend on accurate and fast analysis of 3D scenes. This paper gives an overview of recent developments in depth camera technology and introduces the depth measurement methods used in reality. And it also presents the ongoing researches and applications on depth cameras used in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), like using depth camera as a touch sensor, using depth camera in 3D reconstruction, hand gesture recognition and tangible interaction.