Hand posture recognition based on heterogeneous features fusion of multiple kernels learning

As a rapid developing research topic in the machine vision field, image-based hand posture recognition has the potential to be an efficient and intuitive tool of human-computer interaction. For improving the accuracy of multi-class hand postures and extending the algorithm generalization,a novel hand posture recognition method is proposed by integrating the multiple image features and multiple kernels learning support vector machine(SVM). Firstly, three types of feature descriptors are extracted to describe the characteristics of a hand posture image. Shape context descriptor represents distribution characteristics of the edge points of the hand posture image. Pyramid histogram of oriented gradient describes characteristics of local and global shape effectively. The Bag of Feature(BOF) algorithm describes the surface texture characteristics of the posture image. Secondly, the Chamfer kernel and histogram intersection kernel are rebuilt to obtain the basis kernels of the features. And the combined kernel is constructed by weighting the basis kernels.So the heterogeneous features fusion realizes. Finally, the classification model and optimal fusion weights are calculated by using multiple kernels learning algorithm. The unknown category posture can be recognized by the trained multiple kernels of SVM. Experiments on Jochen Triesch’s hand posture dataset demonstrate that the proposed method obtains higher recognition rate than the traditional single-kernel classifier and other recent methods.