A VISION-BASED 3-D MOUSE

Recently, several devices for improving quality and efficiency human-c omputer interaction have been proposed. This is mainly due to the requ irements of virtual reality applications, where the greatest part of t he most circulating devices must be worn by the user-e.g. gloves for h and-tracking, complete or partial tracksuits. These techniques allow t he estimation of most human body movements. On the other hand, the ado ption of such devices is unsuitable for many applications since they a re too constrictive-e.g. teleconferencing. For this reason, other simp ler devices such as 3-D mice have been suggested. Most of the 3-D mice proposed in the literature compel the user to be connected to the dev ice and their behaviour is much closer to a Joystick rather than to a true 3-D mouse. More recently, vision-based hand tracking systems have been presented, but most of them constrain the user to wear gloves, b racelets or to mark some points on the hand. In this paper, a vision-b ased, glove- and mark-free hand tracking system is proposed. This is b ased on stereo vision and can be implemented with low-cost architectur es owing to its low computational complexity. In addition, the estimat ion process defined is very robust and allows the simultaneous hand-po sition tracking and the recognition of some hand postures, thus implem enting a true non-constrictive 3-D mouse. (C) 1995 Academic Press Limi ted