Features, Regions, Gestures: Components of a Generic Gesture Recognition Engine

In recent years, research in novel types of human-computer interaction, for example multi-touch or tangible interfaces, has increased considerably. Although a large number of innovative applications have already been written based on these new input methods, they often have significant deficiencies from a developer’s point of view. Aspects such as configurability, portability and code reuse have been largely overlooked. A prime example for these problems is the topic of gesture recognition. Existing implementations are mostly tied to a certain hardware platform, tightly integrated into user interface libraries and monolithic, with hard coded gesture descriptions. Developers are therefore time and again forced to reimplement crucial application components. To address these drawbacks, we propose a clean separation between user interface and gesture recognition. In this paper, we present a widely applicable, generic specification of gestures which enables the implementation of a hardware-independent standalone gesture recognition engine for multi-touch and tangible interaction. The goal is to allow the developer to focus on the user interface itself instead of on internal components of the application.     «

In recent years, research in novel types of human-computer interaction, for example multi-touch or tangible interfaces, has increased considerably. Although a large number of innovative applications have already been written based on these new input methods, they often have significant deficiencies from a developer’s point of view. Aspects such as configurability, portability and code reuse have been largely overlooked. A prime example for these problems is the topic of gesture recognition. E...     »