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HandVR: a hand-gesture-based interface to a video retrieval system

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Abstract

Using one’s hands in human–computer interaction increases both the effectiveness of computer usage and the speed of interaction. One way of accomplishing this goal is to utilize computer vision techniques to develop hand-gesture-based interfaces. A video database system is one application where a hand-gesture-based interface is useful, because it provides a way to specify certain queries more easily. We present a hand-gesture-based interface for a video database system to specify motion and spatiotemporal object queries. We use a regular, low-cost camera to monitor the movements and configurations of the user’s hands and translate them to video queries. We conducted a user study to compare our gesture-based interface with a mouse-based interface on various types of video queries. The users evaluated the two interfaces in terms of different usability parameters, including the ease of learning, ease of use, ease of remembering (memory), naturalness, comfortable use, satisfaction, and enjoyment. The user study showed that querying video databases is a promising application area for hand-gesture-based interfaces, especially for queries involving motion and spatiotemporal relations.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Rana Nelson for proofreading this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Technology and Information Systems, Bilkent University, 06800 , Bilkent, Ankara, Turkey

    Serkan Genç

  2. Department of Computer Engineering, Turgut Özal University, 06010 , Keçiören, Ankara, Turkey

    Muhammet Baştan

  3. Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University, 06800 , Bilkent, Ankara, Turkey

    Uğur Güdükbay & Özgür Ulusoy

  4. Department of Computer Engineering, Middle East Technical University, 06531 , İnönü Bulvarı, Ankara, Turkey

    Volkan Atalay

Authors
  1. Serkan Genç
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  2. Muhammet Baştan
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  3. Uğur Güdükbay
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  4. Volkan Atalay
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  5. Özgür Ulusoy
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Correspondence to Uğur Güdükbay.

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Genç, S., Baştan, M., Güdükbay, U. et al. HandVR: a hand-gesture-based interface to a video retrieval system. SIViP 9, 1717–1726 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-014-0631-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-014-0631-x

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