Vision based acquisition of mouth actions for human-computer interaction

Abstract

We describe a computer vision based system that allows use of movements of the mouth for human-computer interaction (HCI). The lower region of the face is tracked by locating and tracking the position of the nostrils. The location of the nostrils determines a sub-region of the image from which the cavity of the open mouth may be segmented. Shape features of the open mouth can then be used for continuous real-time data input, for human-computer interaction. Several applications of the head-tracking mouth controller are described. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.