Gestural Interaction for Virtual Reality Environments through Data Gloves

Abstract

In virtual environments, virtual hand interactions play a key role in interactivity and realism allowing to perform fine motions. Data glove is widely used in Virtual Reality (VR) and through simulating a human hands natural anatomy (Avatar's hands) in its appearance and motion is possible to interact with the environment and virtual objects. Recently, hand gestures are considered as one of the most meaningful and expressive signals. As consequence, this paper explores the use of hand gestures as a mean of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) for VR applications through data gloves. Using a hand gesture recognition and tracking method, accurate and real-time interactive performance can be obtained. To verify the effectiveness and usability of the system, an experiment of ease learning based on execution's time was performed. The experimental results demonstrate that this interaction's approach does not present problems for people more experienced in the use of computer applications. While people with basic knowledge has some problems the system becomes easy to use with practice.