This paper proposes a virtual touchpad human computer interaction (HCI) based
on the fingertip hand gesture recognition (FHGR) method for smartphone with depth
camera. The virtual touchpad HCI requires less computing power and memory resource
than the conventional hand gesture recognition (HGR) methods. It consists of three
modules: (1) open hand identification, (2) active fingertip detection and tracking, and
(3) fingertip hand gesture recognition (FHGR). First, the handshape region is segmented
and divided into three component regions: arm, palm, and fingers. Second, we locate
the fingertips and detect the active fingertips. Finally, the trajectory of the active
fingertips can be analyzed for FHGR. The two major contributions of this paper are (1)
development of a real-time FHGR method with high recognition accuracy and (2)
implementation of a virtual touchpad HCI for the smart phones.
