METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DETECTING GESTURES

• US 20110304541A1
• Filed: 06/13/2011
• Published: 12/15/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/11/2010
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Dalal, Navneet
• Application Number:
  US13/159,379
• Publication Number:
  US 20110304541A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/158
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/017 Gesture based interaction, e.g. based on a set of recognized hand gestures interaction based on gestures traced on a digitiser G06F3/04883
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0346 with detection of the device orientation or free movement in a 3D space, e.g. 3D mice, 6-DOF [six degrees of freedom] pointers using gyroscopes, accelerometers or tilt-sensors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04883 for inputting data by handwriting, e.g. gesture or text
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services

Abstract

A method and system for detecting user interface gestures that includes obtaining an image from an imaging unit; identifying object search area of the images; detecting at least a first gesture object in the search area of an image of a first instance; detecting at least a second gesture object in the search area of an image of at least a second instance; and determining an input gesture from an occurrence of the first gesture object and the at least second gesture object.

Claims

1. A method for detecting user interface gestures comprising:

obtaining images from an imaging unit;

identifying object search area of the images;

detecting at least a first gesture object in the search area of an image of a first instance;

detecting at least a second gesture object in the search area of an image of at least a second instance; and

determining an input gesture from an occurrence of the first gesture object and the at least second gesture object.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying object search area includes identifying background regions of image data and excluding background from the object search area.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the imaging unit is a single RGB camera capturing a video of two-dimensional images.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the first gesture object and the second gesture object are both characterized as hand images;

wherein the first gesture object is particularly characterized by an image of a hand in a first configuration and the second gesture object is particularly characterized by an image of a hand in a second configuration.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising computing feature vectors from the images, wherein detecting a first gesture object and detecting a second gesture object are computed from the feature vectors.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein detecting at least a first gesture object includes detecting a hand object and detecting a face object, wherein detection of the hand object and the face object are computed from the same feature vectors.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising determining a operation status of at least two processing units and transitioning operation of the steps of identifying object search area, detecting at least a first gesture object, detecting at least a second gesture, and determining an input gesture to the lowest operation status of the at least two processing units.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein transitioning operation includes transitioning operation between a central processing unit and a graphics processing unit.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting a first gesture object includes detecting at least a hand object and a face object.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein determining input gesture includes augmenting the input based on a detected face object.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein a first orientation of a face object augments the input by canceling gesture input from a hand object, and a second orientation of a face object augments the input by enabling the gesture input from a hand object.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising identifying a user from a face object, and applying personalized determination of input.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein applying personalized determination of input includes retrieving user specific object data of the identified user, wherein detection of the first gesture object and the second gesture object use the user specific object data.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein applying personalized determination of input includes enabling inputs allowed in a user permissions profile of the user.

15. The method of claim 10, wherein a mood of the user is a configuration of the face object detected, wherein augmenting the input includes selecting an input mapped to a detected hand gesture and a detected mood configuration of the face object.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising tracking the object motion;

wherein determining the input gesture includes selecting a gesture input corresponding to the combination of tracked motion and object transition.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein detection of a first gesture object includes detecting a hand in a configuration associated with multi-dimensional input, and wherein determining gesture input includes using tracked motion of the hand as multi-dimensional cursor input.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the tracked motion of the hand is used for key entry through the motion of the hand.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein the input gesture is configured for altering operation of a computing device.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein the object is a face object;

further comprising displaying an advertisement on a display, and gesture input is an attention input for the advertisement.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein the occurrence of the first gesture object and the at least second gesture object is selected from the group consisting of a pattern for a transitioning sequence of different gesture objects, a pattern of at least two discreet occurrence of different gesture objects, and a pattern where the first and at least second gesture object are associated with the same orientation of an object.