Gesture-Based Interface Using Baby Signs for the Elderly and People with Mobility Impairment in a Smart House Environment

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Tae-Young Lee, Heon-Hui Kim, Kwang-Hyun Park

Published: 2010, Last Modified: 03 Mar 2026ICOST 2010EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: We present a development of a gesture-based interface for the elderly and people with mobility impairment in a smart house environment. To reduce a burden of memorizing a variety of gesture commands, we introduce baby signs which are natural and easy-to-remember body signs without special education. The baby signs can be applied not only to communicate with others but also to interact with a computer for people with low level of proficiency in conventional peripherals. To achieve this purpose, we have attempted to create a real application working under illumination change and real-time requirement. The system observes the user’s sign by a monitor-mounted camera and color gloves. Introducing a robust hand segmentation method against illumination change and adopting HMMs, our initial result shows 94.33% success rate for 6 sign words.