ABSTRACT Gestures are of particular interest as a HCI modality for navigation because people alre... more ABSTRACT Gestures are of particular interest as a HCI modality for navigation because people already use gestures habitually to indicate directions. It only takes a user to learn few customized gestures for a given navigational task, as opposed to other technologies that require changing hardware components and lengthy procedures. We propose an integrated gesture recognition based interface for people with upper extremity mobility impairments to control a service robot.
Abstract This work describes a hand gesture recognition system using an optimized image processin... more Abstract This work describes a hand gesture recognition system using an optimized image processing-fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithm. The parameters of the image processing and clustering algorithm were simultaneously found using a neighborhood parameter search routine, resulting in solutions within 1-2% of optimal. Comparison of user dependent and user independent systems, when tested with their own trainers, resulted in recognition accuracies of 98.9% and 98.2%, respectively.
Abstract The Possibilistic C-Means clustering algorithm, in its original form, is not very suitab... more Abstract The Possibilistic C-Means clustering algorithm, in its original form, is not very suitable for clustering due to the undesirable tendency to create coincident clusters and to converge to a “worthless” partitions in the case of poor initializations, but it provides robustness to noise and intuitive interpretation of the membership values.
Abstract A novel multimodal robotic scrub nurse (RSN) system for the operating room (OR) is prese... more Abstract A novel multimodal robotic scrub nurse (RSN) system for the operating room (OR) is presented. The RSN assists the main surgeon by passing surgical instruments. Experiments were conducted to test the system with speech and gesture modalities and average instrument acquisition times were compared. Experimental results showed that 97% of the gestures were recognized correctly under changes in scale and rotation and that the multimodal system responded faster than the unimodal systems.
In this paper, we consider a vision-based system that can interpret a user's gestures in real tim... more In this paper, we consider a vision-based system that can interpret a user's gestures in real time to manipulate objects within a medical data visualization environment. Dynamic navigation gestures are translated to commands based on their relative positions on the screen. Static gesture poses are identified to execute non-directional commands. This is accomplished by using Haar-like features to represent the shape of the hand. These features are then input to a Fuzzy C-Means Clustering algorithm for pose classification.
Abstract A global approach to hand gesture vocabulary (GV) design is proposed which includes huma... more Abstract A global approach to hand gesture vocabulary (GV) design is proposed which includes human as well as technical design factors. The human centered desires (intuitiveness, comfort) of multiple users are implicitly represented through indices obtained from ergonomic studies representing the psycho-physiological aspects of users. The main technical aspect considered is that of machine recognition of gestures. We believe this is the first conceptualization of the optimal hand gesture design problem in analytical form.
Hand gestures to control systems require accurate recognition, high learnability, usability, ergo... more Hand gestures to control systems require accurate recognition, high learnability, usability, ergonomic design and comfort. Unfortunately, most gesture interfaces are designed with the technical consideration of recognition accuracy as the central focus. In this research we consider hand gestures that are unencumbered, ie; can be captured with camera vision devices.
Abstract Gesture interfaces are needed for natural intuitive communication with machine devices. ... more Abstract Gesture interfaces are needed for natural intuitive communication with machine devices. Hand gesture intuitiveness is the cognitive association between a command or intent, and its physical gestural expression. Using an automated tool we quantified intuitive indices for static gesture commands for a car navigation task. A small number of gestures were selected to express most of the commands with 1/3 used only by single individuals. This followed a power function analogous to Zipf's Law for languages.
Abstract–In this paper, person detection with simultaneous or subsequent human body posture recog... more Abstract–In this paper, person detection with simultaneous or subsequent human body posture recognition is achieved using parts-based models, since the search space for typical poses is much smaller than the kinematics space. Posture recovery is carried out by detecting the human body, its posture and orientation at the same time. Since features of different human postures can be expected to have some shared subspace against the non-person class, detection and classification simultaneously is tenable.
Computer information technology is increasingly penetrating into the hospital domain. It is impor... more Computer information technology is increasingly penetrating into the hospital domain. It is important that such technology be used in a safe manner to avoid serious mistakes leading to possible fatal incidents. Keyboards and mice are today's principle method of human-computer interaction. Unfortunately, it has been found that a common method of spreading infection from one person to another include computer keyboards and mice in intensive care units (ICUs) used by doctors and nurses [1]. Introducing a more natural
A need exists for intuitive hand gesture machine interaction in which the machine not only recogn... more A need exists for intuitive hand gesture machine interaction in which the machine not only recognizes gestures, but also the human feels comfortable and natural in their execution. The gesture vocabulary design problem is rigorously formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem. Psycho-physiological measures (intuitiveness, comfort) and gesture recognition accuracy are taken as the multi-objective factors. The hand gestures are static and recognized by a vision based fuzzy c-means classifier.
Abstract A gesture interface is developed for users, such as doctors/surgeons, to browse medical ... more Abstract A gesture interface is developed for users, such as doctors/surgeons, to browse medical images in a sterile medical environment. A vision-based gesture capture system interprets user's gestures in real-time to manipulate objects in an image visualization environment. A color distribution model of the gamut of colors of the users hand or glove is built at the start of each session resulting in an independent system.
This work presents an automated method of segmentation of faces in color images with complex back... more This work presents an automated method of segmentation of faces in color images with complex backgrounds. Segmentation of the face from the background in an image is performed by using face color feature information. Skin regions are determined by sampling the skin colors of the face in a Hue Saturation Value (HSV) color model, and then training a fuzzy min-max neural network (FMMNN) to automatically segment these skin colors.
Abstract: Whether attempting to review digital radiologic images during a procedure or reviewing ... more Abstract: Whether attempting to review digital radiologic images during a procedure or reviewing labs on a clinical ward, computer keyboards and mice are potential sources for contamination of clinicians during sterile and non-sterile activities related to clinical care. The authors describe and demonstrate a live system prototype for hands-free, gesture-based control of an electronic medical record (EMR) system.
Abstract A gesture driven robotic scrub nurse (GRSN) for the operating room (OR) is presented. Th... more Abstract A gesture driven robotic scrub nurse (GRSN) for the operating room (OR) is presented. The GRSN passes surgical instruments to the surgeon during surgery which reduces the workload of a human scrub nurse. This system offers several advantages such as freeing human nurses to perform concurrent tasks, and reducing errors in the OR due to miscommunication or absence of surgical staff.
In this paper we compare similarity measures used for multi-modal registration, and suggest an ap... more In this paper we compare similarity measures used for multi-modal registration, and suggest an approach that combines those measures in a way that the registration parameters are weighted according to the strength of each measure. The measures used are:(1) cross correlation normalized,(2) correlation coefficient,(3) correlation coefficient normalized,(4) the Bhattacharyya coefficient, and (5) the mutual information index. The approach is tested on fruit tree registration using multiple sensors (RGB and infra-red).
ABSTRACT Gestures are of particular interest as a HCI modality for navigation because people alre... more ABSTRACT Gestures are of particular interest as a HCI modality for navigation because people already use gestures habitually to indicate directions. It only takes a user to learn few customized gestures for a given navigational task, as opposed to other technologies that require changing hardware components and lengthy procedures. We propose an integrated gesture recognition based interface for people with upper extremity mobility impairments to control a service robot.
Abstract This work describes a hand gesture recognition system using an optimized image processin... more Abstract This work describes a hand gesture recognition system using an optimized image processing-fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithm. The parameters of the image processing and clustering algorithm were simultaneously found using a neighborhood parameter search routine, resulting in solutions within 1-2% of optimal. Comparison of user dependent and user independent systems, when tested with their own trainers, resulted in recognition accuracies of 98.9% and 98.2%, respectively.
Abstract The Possibilistic C-Means clustering algorithm, in its original form, is not very suitab... more Abstract The Possibilistic C-Means clustering algorithm, in its original form, is not very suitable for clustering due to the undesirable tendency to create coincident clusters and to converge to a “worthless” partitions in the case of poor initializations, but it provides robustness to noise and intuitive interpretation of the membership values.
Abstract A novel multimodal robotic scrub nurse (RSN) system for the operating room (OR) is prese... more Abstract A novel multimodal robotic scrub nurse (RSN) system for the operating room (OR) is presented. The RSN assists the main surgeon by passing surgical instruments. Experiments were conducted to test the system with speech and gesture modalities and average instrument acquisition times were compared. Experimental results showed that 97% of the gestures were recognized correctly under changes in scale and rotation and that the multimodal system responded faster than the unimodal systems.
In this paper, we consider a vision-based system that can interpret a user's gestures in real tim... more In this paper, we consider a vision-based system that can interpret a user's gestures in real time to manipulate objects within a medical data visualization environment. Dynamic navigation gestures are translated to commands based on their relative positions on the screen. Static gesture poses are identified to execute non-directional commands. This is accomplished by using Haar-like features to represent the shape of the hand. These features are then input to a Fuzzy C-Means Clustering algorithm for pose classification.
Abstract A global approach to hand gesture vocabulary (GV) design is proposed which includes huma... more Abstract A global approach to hand gesture vocabulary (GV) design is proposed which includes human as well as technical design factors. The human centered desires (intuitiveness, comfort) of multiple users are implicitly represented through indices obtained from ergonomic studies representing the psycho-physiological aspects of users. The main technical aspect considered is that of machine recognition of gestures. We believe this is the first conceptualization of the optimal hand gesture design problem in analytical form.
Hand gestures to control systems require accurate recognition, high learnability, usability, ergo... more Hand gestures to control systems require accurate recognition, high learnability, usability, ergonomic design and comfort. Unfortunately, most gesture interfaces are designed with the technical consideration of recognition accuracy as the central focus. In this research we consider hand gestures that are unencumbered, ie; can be captured with camera vision devices.
Abstract Gesture interfaces are needed for natural intuitive communication with machine devices. ... more Abstract Gesture interfaces are needed for natural intuitive communication with machine devices. Hand gesture intuitiveness is the cognitive association between a command or intent, and its physical gestural expression. Using an automated tool we quantified intuitive indices for static gesture commands for a car navigation task. A small number of gestures were selected to express most of the commands with 1/3 used only by single individuals. This followed a power function analogous to Zipf's Law for languages.
Abstract–In this paper, person detection with simultaneous or subsequent human body posture recog... more Abstract–In this paper, person detection with simultaneous or subsequent human body posture recognition is achieved using parts-based models, since the search space for typical poses is much smaller than the kinematics space. Posture recovery is carried out by detecting the human body, its posture and orientation at the same time. Since features of different human postures can be expected to have some shared subspace against the non-person class, detection and classification simultaneously is tenable.
Computer information technology is increasingly penetrating into the hospital domain. It is impor... more Computer information technology is increasingly penetrating into the hospital domain. It is important that such technology be used in a safe manner to avoid serious mistakes leading to possible fatal incidents. Keyboards and mice are today's principle method of human-computer interaction. Unfortunately, it has been found that a common method of spreading infection from one person to another include computer keyboards and mice in intensive care units (ICUs) used by doctors and nurses [1]. Introducing a more natural
A need exists for intuitive hand gesture machine interaction in which the machine not only recogn... more A need exists for intuitive hand gesture machine interaction in which the machine not only recognizes gestures, but also the human feels comfortable and natural in their execution. The gesture vocabulary design problem is rigorously formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem. Psycho-physiological measures (intuitiveness, comfort) and gesture recognition accuracy are taken as the multi-objective factors. The hand gestures are static and recognized by a vision based fuzzy c-means classifier.
Abstract A gesture interface is developed for users, such as doctors/surgeons, to browse medical ... more Abstract A gesture interface is developed for users, such as doctors/surgeons, to browse medical images in a sterile medical environment. A vision-based gesture capture system interprets user's gestures in real-time to manipulate objects in an image visualization environment. A color distribution model of the gamut of colors of the users hand or glove is built at the start of each session resulting in an independent system.
This work presents an automated method of segmentation of faces in color images with complex back... more This work presents an automated method of segmentation of faces in color images with complex backgrounds. Segmentation of the face from the background in an image is performed by using face color feature information. Skin regions are determined by sampling the skin colors of the face in a Hue Saturation Value (HSV) color model, and then training a fuzzy min-max neural network (FMMNN) to automatically segment these skin colors.
Abstract: Whether attempting to review digital radiologic images during a procedure or reviewing ... more Abstract: Whether attempting to review digital radiologic images during a procedure or reviewing labs on a clinical ward, computer keyboards and mice are potential sources for contamination of clinicians during sterile and non-sterile activities related to clinical care. The authors describe and demonstrate a live system prototype for hands-free, gesture-based control of an electronic medical record (EMR) system.
Abstract A gesture driven robotic scrub nurse (GRSN) for the operating room (OR) is presented. Th... more Abstract A gesture driven robotic scrub nurse (GRSN) for the operating room (OR) is presented. The GRSN passes surgical instruments to the surgeon during surgery which reduces the workload of a human scrub nurse. This system offers several advantages such as freeing human nurses to perform concurrent tasks, and reducing errors in the OR due to miscommunication or absence of surgical staff.
In this paper we compare similarity measures used for multi-modal registration, and suggest an ap... more In this paper we compare similarity measures used for multi-modal registration, and suggest an approach that combines those measures in a way that the registration parameters are weighted according to the strength of each measure. The measures used are:(1) cross correlation normalized,(2) correlation coefficient,(3) correlation coefficient normalized,(4) the Bhattacharyya coefficient, and (5) the mutual information index. The approach is tested on fruit tree registration using multiple sensors (RGB and infra-red).
Uploads
Papers by Juan Wachs