Development of wrist contour measuring device for an interface using hand shape recognition

Recently, gesture recognition is widely used as interface. Popular gestures are mainly arm motion and whole body motion. Although hand shape is a good sign that can express rich information with small motions, few applications are in practical use. That is because the existing methods have several problems; blocks of finger sense and interference with finger motion, restrictions of hand position and posture, and complex initial configurations. In this study, we try to recognize hand shapes by observing the wrist contour, which varies with finger motions. We have developed a robust wrist-watch-type device that captures wrist contour, and have collected data from a substantial number of subjects. With the collected data, we conduct hand shape recognition experiments in several conditions. To overcome the positioning deviations and individual differences, two feature types are designed. Through the experiment, potential of the features is confirmed, and some effective features are picked up. In addition, concerning the design of recognition target properties, we examine the number of target hand shapes and the combination of hand shapes through the experiment, and several clues for target design are revealed. keywords: hand shape recognition, human machine interface, novel sensor, wearable device, wrist contour