Gesture control interface for immersive panoramic displays

In this paper, we propose a gesture-based interface designed to interact with panoramic scenes. The system combines novel static gestures with a fast hand tracking method. Our proposal is to use static gestures as shortcuts to activate functionalities of the system (i.e. volume up/down, mute, pause, etc.), and hand tracking to freely explore the panoramic video. The overall system is multi-user, and incorporates a user identification module based on face recognition, which is able both to recognize returning users and to add new users online. The system exploits depth data, making it robust to challenging illumination conditions. We show through experimental results the performance of every component of the system compared to the state of the art. We also show the results of a usability study performed with several untrained users.