Ten years ago, gesture recognition technologies were considered a scene from The Black Mirror. Nowadays, you can control not only your smartphone or speaker but also your car or save lives with the help of gestures. Let’s learn more about this technology and how it works.
Gesture recognition explained
Gesture recognition helps computers understand human body language. This helps to create a more robust connection between people and machines, rather than just a basic text-based user interface or a graphical user interface. You do not need to use the keys or touch the screen to perform the action. The device’s motion sensors perceive and interpret the user’s gestures as the main source of data input.
Thus, gesture recognition by the AI systems has become significant progress over the last ten years. Nowadays, this technology is used in high accuracy surgeries, health monitoring equipment, game systems, and many others. Hand recognition software is actively growing, and it is expected that the market for this technology will be worth $36.3 in 2027.
How does gesture recognition technology work?
Lots of participants take part in the complicated process of gesture recognition. The most important is the person who gives the gesture signals to the machine. Further, you can divide it into soft and hard elements of the process. Software is a program or application, machine learning algorithm, and AI. Hardware can include sensors, cameras, and other physical devices required for gesture reading.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the gesture recognition process in understandable language. The user makes a certain gesture, and the application already performs the necessary action in a second. What happens in this second? When you move, the camera and sensors record everything and pass the information to the brain of the device. There, the app and machine learning algorithms analyze and segment your movements, ensuring they grasp and understand every movement frame and send the received information to the AI. It, in turn, searches for the command that the device or app must perform in response to this move. And all this takes less than a second!
Industries using gesture recognition
Gaming
Microsoft introduced such technology in 2010 in its non-contact Kinect sensor for Xbox 360. It records the movements of the body and hands in real time, making it unnecessary for gamers to use the keyboard and joysticks. Gesture recognition provides an enhanced, natural interaction for the 3D virtual world or gaming environment.
Automotive
The automobile industry does not cease to delight us with new developments, and if the ability to control music and accept some signals through gestures does not excite you anymore, what about the ability to start the car? LG Electronics has already filed a patent for a new system that allows car owners to stop the engine with gestures and facial recognition. The cameras and sensors in the car’s interior read the driver’s gestures, fingerprints, and biometric data and allow you to start the engine and make personal adjustments without a single key. Moreover, this system can guarantee your life as it can perform the necessary actions when the driver is unaccounted for, or other unreasonable situations have occurred.
Medicine
For sure, the use of this technology in medicine is the most interesting and promising. For example, Microsoft has developed a non-contact interaction between surgeons in a sterile operating room with MRI images and patient scans without the need for scrubbing every time they need to look at the data in more detail. This will not only reduce the risk of infections and inflammation and shorten people’s time under anesthesia but will also help save billions of dollars every year since one scrubbing costs around 500 dollars. Moreover, surgeons will also be able to make records in the air, which the AI will recognize. Moreover, gesture recognition technology is a more suitable solution for operation or reanimation rooms, where side sounds make the use of voice recognition problematic.
Gesture recognition technology also improves the lives of people with disabilities and enhances the rehabilitation process of patients with movement and coordination problems.
Communication
People like to show their emotions through gestures. There seems to be no ideal sphere of use other than video conferencing tools. The Coronavirus pandemic has given new functions in this area, and gesture recognition has made life easier for many users. For example, Zoom already offers this technology for reactions at meetings. Video conferencing platform Whoosh went even further and gave its users the ability not only to send responses to interactions during the session but also to control the app and have access to functions through gestures. This technology can significantly improve the communication process between remote team members and make it more comfortable and effective.
The potential for using gesture recognition technology is unlimited. You can try to predict it with the help of science fiction films. Try this technology today, and your life will never be the same again.