Interactive multi-object tracking for virtual object manipulation

Abstract. We present an interactive system to manipulate a virtual object by tracking multiple hands in 3D space using a Kinect device. The system segments hand shapes from a captured 3D scene by using depth information and active contours. A hand shape is recognized by a trained naive Bayes classifier, whether it belongs to a palm, a pointing hand form or both hands with simple occlusion. A plane is approximated by using RANSAC for a palm hand form, while a vector from the hand centroid to the fingertip is obtained for a pointing hand form by using ICP as tracking method. A shape of simple occluded two hands is split into a palm and an incomplete pointing hand form, whose missing data is estimated by using PCA. The system works in semi-real time.