Kinect Chapter 7.   NITE Hand Gestures

This chapter was previously labelled as "NUI Chapter 16.3".

This chapter is about utilizing OpenNI's gesture and hands generators with NITE's hand gesture detectors. I'll be looking at how to create wave, push, swipe, circle, and steady detectors, and a hand point listener for the Kinect sensor.

The application, GestureDetect.java, doesn't have a graphical interface; instead it prints user gesture information to the command line, as shown on the right.

GestureDetect begins by initializing five gesture detectors (wave, push, swipe, circle, and steady) and a hands point listener, and printing some of the detectors' default settings. After the user prompt, "Make a click gesture…", the program enters a "focus detection" phase where it tries to identify a hand by having the user perform a "click" gesture. If this is successful recognized, then the application starts a "gesture tracking" session where the user's wave, push, swipe, circle, and steady gestures are reported.

Actually, the program never reports on circle gestures, due to a minor error in the NITE API, as explained in section 10.

Downloads

• The PDF file for the draft chapter (96 KB). Last updated: 10th November 2011.
  
• Zipped code (8 KB). Last updated: 10th November 2011.
  IMPORTANT: the installation details for the OpenNI and NITE software have changed since the book was published; please read the details on the main KOPS page.

• Up to the Kinect Open Source Programming Secrets Index Page
• Back to Chapter 6. The Tilt Motor, LED, and Accelerometer
• On to Chapter 8. NITE Hands Tracker