Gestures are ingrained in human communication and it is virtually impossible to communicate with someone without moving your hands or gesticulating with your fingers while in conversation. Gesture recognition technology adds another dimension to our interactions with machines, devices, or computers. It is projected that over 600 million smartphones will be shipped with vision-based gesture recognition features in 2017.
Camera-based tracking for gesture recognition has actually been in use for some time. Leading game consoles Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation both have gesture recognition equipment - Kinect and PlayStation Eye respectively. These devices are in their seventh and eighth generation. Several challenges remain for gesture recognition technology for mobile devices, including effectiveness of the technology in adverse light conditions, variations in the background, and high power consumption. However, it is believed these problems can be overcome with different tracking solutions and new technologies.
