Human Detection and Gesture Recognition Based on Ambient Intelligence

Abstract

Recently, various types of human-friendly robots such as pet robots, amusement robots, and partner robots, have been developed for the next generation society. The human-friendly robots should perform human recognition, voice recognition, and gesture recognition in order to realize natural communication with a human. Furthermore, the robots should coexist in the human environments based on learning and adaptation. However, it is very difficult for the robot to successfully realize these capabilities and functions under real world conditions. Two different approaches have been discussed to improve these capabilities and functions of the robots. One approach is to use conventional intelligent technologies based on various sensors equipped on a robot. As a result, the size of a robot becomes large. The other approach is to use ambient intelligence technologies of environmental systems based on the structured information available to a robot. The robot directly receives the environmental information through a local area network without measurement by the robot itself. In the following, we explain the current status of researches on sensor networks and interactive behavior acquisition from the viewpoint of ambient intelligence.