Markus Schlattmann

Markerless 4 gestures 6 DOF real-time visual tracking of the human hand with automatic initialization

In this paper we present a novel computer vision based hand‐tracking technique, which is capable of robustly tracking 6+4DOF of the human hand in real‐time (at least 25 frames per second) with the help of 3 (or more) off‐the‐shelf consumer cameras. ‘6+4DOF’ means that the system can track the global pose (6 continuous parameters for translation and rotation) of 4 different gestures. A key feature of our system is its fully automatic real‐time initialization procedure, which, along with a sound tracking‐lost detector, makes the system fit for real‐world applications. Because of this, our method acts as an enabling technology for uncumbersome hand‐based 3D Human‐Computer‐Interaction (HCI). Previously, using the hand as an at least 6DOF input device involved the use of either datagloves or markers. Using our tracking we evaluated the use of the hand as an input device for two prevalent Virtual Reality applications: fly‐through exploration of a virtual world and a simple digital assembly simulation.

Hybrid cursor control for precise and fast positioning without clutching

In virtual environments, selection is typically solved by moving a cursor above a virtual item/object and issuing a selection command. In the context of hand-tracking, the cursor movement is controlled by a certain mapping of the hand pose to the virtual cursor position, allowing the cursor to reach any place in the virtual working space. If the virtual working space is bounded, a linear mapping can be used. This is called a proportional control.