Vision-based recognition of hand shapes in taiwanese sign language

Abstract

The pixel-based shape representation has been sensitive to rotation. In this paper, we propose a pixel-based descriptor that is invariant with rotation and scale for the hand shape recognition in Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL). Based on the property that a hand shape is characteristic of a unique pointing direction, angle normalization is used to meet the rotation-invariant requirement. With angle normalization, the traces of class covariance matrices have been reduced almost all over the classes of hand shapes, implying a less overlap between classes. It is confirmed by the experiments that show an increase in recognition accuracy. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.