Duity: A Low-cost and Pervasive Finger-count Based Hand Gesture Recognition System for Low-literate and Novice Users

Tusher Chakraborty, Md. Taksir Hasan Majumder, Md. Nasim, A. B. M. Alim Al Islam

Abstract: In the context of developed countries, a considerable amount of research studies have been done to make Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) as natural and intuitive as possible for the public computing devices. Given the proliferation of public computing devices in the developing regions, a context-aware HCI design, focusing the low-literate and novice users from these regions, has the utmost importance. Taking the hygiene issue with the usage of touch-based public computing devices into account, in-air hand gestures are considered as one of the most natural forms of non-verbal interaction in this regard. In this paper, we present Duity -- a low-cost finger-count based hand gesture recognition system -- which reliably tackles the hurdle faced by novice and low-literacy populations. Exploiting the reflective property of visible light spectrum, we develop a mechanism that can reliably count fingers and thus identify different gestures. The system is fine-tuned to such an extent that varying lighting conditions and environmental setups can not perturb the accurate identification of the gestures. Our claims are supported by a user evaluation, which takes multiple scenarios into accounts, confirming the robustness, usability, and acceptability of Duity.