Recognizing hand gestures using wrist shapes

We introduce a new hand gesture recognition interface, called virtual button. The virtual button utilizes patterns of the wrist shape. It can recognize a pinch motion and it can be used as a generic button event. Using the pinch motion is favorable in multi-touch based interactions or games because it can express picking, moving, and releasing (or putting) activities in a natural way. We use a small-sized IR optic sensor to get patterns of finger flexor tendons on wrist cause by moving fingers. These patterns are used to recognize finger/hand movements. Our method can also measure applied forces at the picking operation where using a vision-based approach may encounter difficulties. Finally, our experimental result shows that using the IR-optic sensor can be an effective solution to implement the virtual button. Our system also shows that it can recognize effectively various kinds of other hand motions such as a shaking of hands or bending of fingers.