detecting the x and y co-ordintes of a hand and finger from webcam

is it possible to detect the x and y co-ordintes of a hand and fingers from webcam?

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

I suggest you look at the many, many papers on gesture recognition, section 21.4 in: http://iris.usc.edu/Vision-Notes/bibliography/contentspeople.html#Face%20Recognition,%20Detection,%20Tracking,%20Gesture%20Recognition,%20Fingerprints,%20Biometrics There are also papers there on tracking such as this section "21.4.2.4 Hand Tracking for Gestures."

Answer 2

[Sean de Wolski]

Yes.

Answer 3

[Walter Roberson]

No, not unless their hands are very unusually shaped such that each finger can be distinguished no matter what the rotation angle of the hand.

For example if I relax my hand and move it freely around, the little finger (5th) is commonly hidden by the middle (3rd) finger, and the 4th finger between them is often only visible as a small sliver of finger tip poking out from underneath the middle (3rd) finger.

You might be able to use two webcams together to resolve this problem.

Note that the web cam will need to be either quite high resolution or focused very carefully on the hand (probably with automatic tracking) in order to be able to reliably distinguish the fingers from each other.

[Sean de Wolski]

It didn't say each finger, just at least two (to make it plural). It actually didn't mention that the fingers have to be attached to the hand, just if there are fingers can they be identified.

Though if the room is completely dark then I guess you're right, not doable.

[Walter Roberson]

Some webcams can detect infrared. Seriously -- infrared is within the detection range of some common light sensors and the manufacturer has to put in an infrared filter to block it.

http://www.hoagieshouse.com/IR/

[Sean de Wolski]

Interesting reading :)

[Hashem Burki]

Can anyone direct me on how it could be done? thanks.

[Sean de Wolski]

Not without seeing an image. We could leave it to the infinite monkey but (s)he's busy with Shakespeare today.

[Walter Roberson]

In view of the previous responses, you need to clarify your goals.

[Hashem Burki]

i want to track my hands and fingers on a webcam. I have used the skin segmentation code to detect the hand. After applying that, what i see is the hand as plain white and the background as black.(Its not perfect and somewhat noisy). Now i want to recognize the fingers and track their movement. How can i get their x-y coordinates?

[Walter Roberson]

If you need to be able to recognize the individual fingers in each picture and you only have a single point of view, then you cannot do this with visible light.

(I would not rule out possibilities such as using infrared and measuring subtle differences in temperature as the fingers are likely to have different temperatures due to different blood flows because they are different sizes... but I think you are likely to have the same kinds of problems with infrared as you have with visible light.)