Background reflectance modeling for robust finger gesture detection in highly dynamic illumination

Abstract

We aim to develop an 'accessory-free' or 'minimum accessory' interface used for communication and computation without the requirement of any specified gadgets such as finger markers, colored gloves, wrist bands, or touch screens. We detect various types of gestures, by finding fingertip point locations in a dynamic changing foreground projection with varying illumination on an arbitrary background using visual segmentation by reflectance modeling as opposite to recent approaches which use IR(invisible) channel to do so. The overall performance of the system was found to be adequately fast, accurate, and reliable. The objective is to facilitate in the future, a direct graphical interaction with mobile computing devices equipped with mini projectors instead of conventional displays. We term this a dynamic illumination environment as the projected light is liable to change continuously both in time and space and also varies with the content displayed on colored or white surface. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.