GESTURE RECOGNITION APPARATUS USING VEHICLE STEERING WHEEL, AND METHOD FOR RECOGNIZING HAND

摘要

A gesture recognition apparatus capable of recognizing a hand by means of a binary image regardless of direction of light contacting the hand. A binarizing processing section binarizes an input image from a camera to a hand recognizing section to prepare a first binary image by a predetermined method. A rebinarizing processing section only rebinarizes a predetermined area of the input image to prepare a second binary image. A contraction processing section performs a contraction processing on the second binary image. The rebinarizing processing can increase the possibility of recognizing the hand by classifying a portion of the hand that was classified into black in the first binary image into white. The hand is determined to be recognizable if the hand can be recognized in the first binary image and/or in the second binary image.

主权项

1. A gesture recognition apparatus using a steering wheel of a vehicle, the gesture recognition apparatus including imaging means disposed on a position capable of imaging a steering wheel and recognizing means for recognizing a position of a hand on the steering wheel based on an imaging data outputted from the imaging means, the recognizing means comprising:
binarizing means for preparing a first binary image by binarizing the imaging data outputted from the imaging means by a predetermined method; rebinarizing means for preparing a second binary image by determining a first possible area wherein the hand is imaged during making a gesture and a second possible area wherein a background is imaged during making a gesture on the imaging data, determining a new threshold by a predetermined method merging the first and the second areas into one image, and rebinarizing a predetermined area of the imaging data; and determining means for determining the hand as being recognizable if the hand can be recognized in the first binary image and/or in the second binary image.