Detecting Deictic Gestures for Control of Mobile Robots

For industrial environments esp. under conditions of "Industry 4.0" it is necessary to have a mobile and hands-free controlled interaction solution. Within this project a mobile robot system (for picking, lifting and transporting of small boxes) in logistic domains was created. It consists of a gesture detection and recognition system based on Microsoft Kinect (TM) and gesture detection algorithms. For implementing these algorithms several studies about the intuitive use, executing and understanding of mid-air-gestures were processed. The base of detection was to define, if a gesture is executed dynamically or statically and to derive a mathematical model for these different kinds of gestures. Fitting parameters to describe several gesture phases could be found and will be used for their robust recognition. A first prototype with an implementation of this technology also is shown in this paper.