Hello Readers. In this tutorial, I will be teaching you gesture recognition in OpenCV+Python using only Image Processing and no Machine Learning or any Neural Networks.
The gesture_api is a different file that I created. do_gesture_action is a function in that file. The yellow_lower and yellow_upper can be determined by using this python program. So in your case, these values might be different in different lighting conditions. The easiest way to use it is to put the yellow paper in front of the camera and then slowly increasing the lower parameters(H_MIN, V_MIN, S_MIN) one by one and then slowly decreasing the upper parameters (H_MAX, V_MAX, S_MAX). When the adjusting has been done you will find that only the yellow paper will have a corresponding white patch and rest of the image will be dark. Now let's get into the main function and some of its local variables
With that out of the way we can now extract each frame and do the operations as required. These are steps we will be doing
The process_created_gesture function looks like this
What is Gesture Recognition
Gesture recognition is the mathematical interpretation of a human motion by a computing device. There are many algorithms out on the Internet that gives a very good and accurate results on gesture recognition. But here we are not going see them. I developed a very simple and naive algorithm to recognize gestures that are made up of straight lines. Lets see....Give me the code already...
Ok. I got you. Here is the code https://github.com/EvilPort2/SimpleGestureRecognition.Why no Machine Learning or Neural Net?
The answer to this question is very simple. I do not know much about them. Though I have some knowledge about machine learning, I have little to no knowledge about neural networks.Requirements
- A computer with a good camera
- A yellow (though any other colour can be used) piece of paper to be worn in a finger (for image segmentation)
- OpenCV for Python 3
- PyAutoGui for Python 3
- Python 3
- Text Editor like Sublime Text 3 or Atom
- A little bit of knowledge in Maths
Steps we are taking
Since I am using only image processing for this project, I will be using only the direction of movement to determine the gesture.- Take one frame at a time and convert it from RGB colour space to HSV colour space for better yellow colour segmentation.
- Use a mask for yellow colour.
- Bluring and thresholding the mask.
- If a yellow colour is found and it crosses a reasonable area threshold, we start to create a gesture.
- The direction of movement of the yellow cap is calculated by taking the difference between the old centre and the new centre of the yellow colour after every 5th iteration or frame.
- Take the directions and store in a list until the yellow cap disappears from the frame.
- Process the created direction list and the processed direction list is used to take a certain action like a keyboard shortcut.
Let's get our hands dirty...
gesture_action.py
Let us begin with all the important imports and a few global variables
import cv2
import numpy as np
from collections import deque
import pyautogui as gui
from gesture_api import do_gesture_action
cam = cv2.VideoCapture(0) # Camera Object
yellow_lower = np.array([7, 96, 85]) # HSV yellow lower
yellow_upper = np.array([255, 255, 255]) # HSV yellow upper
screen_width, screen_height = gui.size()
camx, camy = 360, 240 # Resize resolution
buff = 128
line_pts = deque(maxlen = buff) # Create a deque data structure which store the present location of centre point of the yellow patch
The gesture_api is a different file that I created. do_gesture_action is a function in that file. The yellow_lower and yellow_upper can be determined by using this python program. So in your case, these values might be different in different lighting conditions. The easiest way to use it is to put the yellow paper in front of the camera and then slowly increasing the lower parameters(H_MIN, V_MIN, S_MIN) one by one and then slowly decreasing the upper parameters (H_MAX, V_MAX, S_MAX). When the adjusting has been done you will find that only the yellow paper will have a corresponding white patch and rest of the image will be dark. Now let's get into the main function and some of its local variables
def gesture_action():
centerx, centery = 0, 0 # Present location of the centre of the yellow patch
old_centerx, old_centery = 0, 0 # Previous location of the centre of the yellow patch
area1 = 0 # Area of the yellow patch
c = 0 # Stores the number of yellow objects in the picture
flag_do_gesture = 0 # If a gesture has been completed then this flag is 1
flag0 = True # Checks if a yellow object is present in the frame
created_gesture_hand1 = [] # stores the direction of the movement
With that out of the way we can now extract each frame and do the operations as required. These are steps we will be doing
-
- Get a frame
- Flip and resize the image to 360*240 for faster processing
- Convert the frame from RGB colour space to HSV colour space
- Now we will be using the yellow colour mask to segment the yellow colour
- Because every camera has some flaws in them which introduces some error in the frame hence we need to reduce the noise in the image and the easiest way to do that is to heavily blur the frame.
- Now if we set the colour threshold to any colour which is above black then we can get the almost exact shape of the the yellow patch.
- Take the contour of the thresholded frame.
- Repeat the above steps for every frame
while True:
_, img = cam.read()
# Resize for faster processing. Flipping for better orientation
img = cv2.flip(img, 1)
img = cv2.resize(img, (camx, camy))
# Convert to HSV for better color segmentation
imgHSV = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
# Mask for yellow color
mask = cv2.inRange(imgHSV, yellow_lower, yellow_upper)
# Bluring to reduce noises
blur = cv2.medianBlur(mask, 15)
blur = cv2.GaussianBlur(blur , (5,5), 0)
# Thresholding
_,thresh = cv2.threshold(blur,0,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY+cv2.THRESH_OTSU)
cv2.imshow("Thresh", thresh)
_, contours, _ = cv2.findContours(thresh.copy(), cv2.RETR_TREE, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
After getting the contours we can have 2 cases-
- Number of contours is greater than zero then yellow colored objects are in the frame.
- Number of contours is zero then no yellow colored objects are in the frame.
Case 1- Yellow colored objects in the frame
- Assign 0 to flag_do_gesture.
- Take the contour that has the maximum area. Let us call this max_contour.
- Find a minimum area rectangle that surrounds the max_contour.
- Take the width and height of the rectangle.
- Find the area of the rectangle by width*height.
- If the area crosses a reasonable threshold then start making a gesture. I found the threshold experimenting with different values and in my case it was 450.
- If the area of the contour crosses the threshold then find the center of the yellow object.
- Draw a rectangular box around it.
- Draw a dot at the center.
- Append the center to the deque line_pts.
- Update the center after every 5th iteration or frame.
- At the 5th iteration take the difference between the old center (x1, y1) and new center (x2, y2). I have used diffx = (x2-x1) and diffy = (y2-y1).
- Hence values of diffx and diffy gives us the direction of movement.
- If the flag0 is False then append the direction to the created_gesture_hand1 list.
- Draw a line for all the points in line_pts
- Assign False to flag0.
Case 2- No yellow colored objects in the frame
- Empty the deque line_pts.
- Process the created_gesture_hand1 by removing the 'St' and the consecutive directions. Let us call it processed_gesture_hand1.
- If flag_do_gesture is 0 and processed_gesture_hand1 then take an action corresponding to a particular gesture.
- Assign 1 to flag_do_gesture. This avoids the gesture action to be run only once and not repeatedly.
- Empty created_hand_gesture.
- Assign True to flag0.
if len(contours) == 0: # Completion of a gesture
line_pts = deque(maxlen = buff) # Empty the deque
processed_gesture_hand1 = tuple(process_created_gesture(created_gesture_hand1))
if flag_do_gesture == 0: # flag_do_gesture to make sure that gesture runs only once and not repeatedly
if processed_gesture_hand1 != ():
do_gesture_action(processed_gesture_hand1)
flag_do_gesture = 1
print(processed_gesture_hand1) # for debugging purposes
created_gesture_hand1 = []
flag0 = True
else:
flag_do_gesture = 0
max_contour = max(contours, key = cv2.contourArea)
rect1 = cv2.minAreaRect(max_contour)
(w, h) = rect1[1]
area1 = w*h
if area1 > 450:
center1 = list(rect1[0])
box = cv2.boxPoints(rect1) # to draw a rectangle
box = np.int0(box)
cv2.drawContours(img,[box],0,(0,0,255),2)
centerx = center1[0] = int(center1[0]) # center of the rectangle
centery = center1[1] = int(center1[1])
cv2.circle(img, (centerx, centery), 2, (0, 255, 0), 2)
line_pts.appendleft(tuple(center1))
if c == 0:
old_centerx = centerx
old_centery = centery
c += 1
diffx, diffy = 0, 0
if c > 5: # check after every 5 iteration the new center
diffx = centerx - old_centerx
diffy = centery - old_centery
c = 0
if flag0 == False:
# the difference between the old center and the new center determines the direction of the movement
if abs(diffx) <=10 and abs(diffy) <= 10:
created_gesture_hand1.append("St")
elif diffx > 15 and abs(diffy) <= 15:
created_gesture_hand1.append("E")
elif diffx < -15 and abs(diffy) <= 15:
created_gesture_hand1.append("W")
elif abs(diffx) <= 15 and diffy < -15:
created_gesture_hand1.append("N")
elif abs(diffx) <= 15 and diffy > 15:
created_gesture_hand1.append("S")
elif diffx > 25 and diffy > 25:
created_gesture_hand1.append("SE")
elif diffx < -25 and diffy > 25:
created_gesture_hand1.append("SW")
elif diffx > 25 and diffy < -25:
created_gesture_hand1.append("NE")
elif diffx < -25 and diffy < -25:
created_gesture_hand1.append("NW")
for i in range(1, len(line_pts)):
if line_pts[i - 1] is None or line_pts[i] is None:
continue
cv2.line(img, line_pts[i-1], line_pts[i], (0, 255, 0), 2)
flag0 = False
The process_created_gesture function looks like this
def process_created_gesture(created_gesture):
"""
function to remove all the St direction and removes duplicate direction if they
occur consecutively.
"""
if created_gesture != []:
for i in range(created_gesture.count("St")):
created_gesture.remove("St")
for j in range(len(created_gesture)):
for i in range(len(created_gesture) - 1):
if created_gesture[i] == created_gesture[i+1]:
created_gesture.remove(created_gesture[i+1])
break
return created_gesture
So the whole file gesture_action.py looks like this.
import cv2
import numpy as np
import pyautogui as gui
from gesture_api import do_gesture_action
from collections import deque
cam = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
yellow_lower = np.array([7, 96, 85]) # HSV yellow lower
yellow_upper = np.array([255, 255, 255]) # HSV yellow upper
screen_width, screen_height = gui.size()
camx, camy = 480, 360
buff = 128
line_pts = deque(maxlen = buff)
def process_created_gesture(created_gesture):
"""
function to remove all the St direction and removes duplicate direction if they
occur consecutively.
"""
if created_gesture != []:
for i in range(created_gesture.count("St")):
created_gesture.remove("St")
for j in range(len(created_gesture)):
for i in range(len(created_gesture) - 1):
if created_gesture[i] == created_gesture[i+1]:
created_gesture.remove(created_gesture[i+1])
break
return created_gesture
def gesture_action():
centerx, centery = 0, 0
old_centerx, old_centery = 0, 0
area1 = 0
c = 0
flag_do_gesture = 0
flag0 = True
created_gesture_hand1 = []
while True:
_, img = cam.read()
# Resize for faster processing. Flipping for better orientation
img = cv2.flip(img, 1)
img = cv2.resize(img, (camx, camy))
# Convert to HSV for better color segmentation
imgHSV = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
# Mask for yellow color
mask = cv2.inRange(imgHSV, yellow_lower, yellow_upper)
# Bluring to reduce noises
blur = cv2.medianBlur(mask, 15)
blur = cv2.GaussianBlur(blur , (5,5), 0)
# Thresholding
_,thresh = cv2.threshold(blur,0,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY+cv2.THRESH_OTSU)
cv2.imshow("Thresh", thresh)
_, contours, _ = cv2.findContours(thresh.copy(), cv2.RETR_TREE, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
w, h = 0, 0
if len(contours) == 0: # Completion of a gesture
line_pts = deque(maxlen = buff) # Empty the deque
processed_gesture_hand1 = tuple(process_created_gesture(created_gesture_hand1))
if flag_do_gesture == 0: # flag_do_gesture to make sure that gesture runs only once and not repeatedly
if processed_gesture_hand1 != ():
do_gesture_action(processed_gesture_hand1)
flag_do_gesture = 1
print(processed_gesture_hand1) # for debugging purposes
created_gesture_hand1 = []
flag0 = True
else:
flag_do_gesture = 0
max_contour = max(contours, key = cv2.contourArea)
rect1 = cv2.minAreaRect(max_contour)
(w, h) = rect1[1]
area1 = w*h
if area1 > 450:
center1 = list(rect1[0])
box = cv2.boxPoints(rect1) # to draw a rectangle
box = np.int0(box)
cv2.drawContours(img,[box],0,(0,0,255),2)
centerx = center1[0] = int(center1[0]) # center of the rectangle
centery = center1[1] = int(center1[1])
cv2.circle(img, (centerx, centery), 2, (0, 255, 0), 2)
line_pts.appendleft(tuple(center1))
if c == 0:
old_centerx = centerx
old_centery = centery
c += 1
diffx, diffy = 0, 0
if c > 5: # check after every 5 iteration the new center
diffx = centerx - old_centerx
diffy = centery - old_centery
c = 0
if flag0 == False:
# the difference between the old center and the new center determines the direction of the movement
if abs(diffx) <=10 and abs(diffy) <= 10:
created_gesture_hand1.append("St")
elif diffx > 15 and abs(diffy) <= 15:
created_gesture_hand1.append("E")
elif diffx < -15 and abs(diffy) <= 15:
created_gesture_hand1.append("W")
elif abs(diffx) <= 15 and diffy < -15:
created_gesture_hand1.append("N")
elif abs(diffx) <= 15 and diffy > 15:
created_gesture_hand1.append("S")
elif diffx > 25 and diffy > 25:
created_gesture_hand1.append("SE")
elif diffx < -25 and diffy > 25:
created_gesture_hand1.append("SW")
elif diffx > 25 and diffy < -25:
created_gesture_hand1.append("NE")
elif diffx < -25 and diffy < -25:
created_gesture_hand1.append("NW")
for i in range(1, len(line_pts)):
if line_pts[i - 1] is None or line_pts[i] is None:
continue
cv2.line(img, line_pts[i-1], line_pts[i], (0, 255, 0), 2)
flag0 = False
cv2.imshow("IMG", img)
if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
break
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
cam.release()
gesture_action()
gesture_api.py
This file contains nothing but the gesture directions and the keyboard shortcut that it needs to emulate. So a square can be made using directions like (North, West, South, East). Now let's say that when a square is made we need to emulate the keyboard shortcut winkey (For Windows) or altleft+f1 (For KDE) and so on. We can have 2 cases for the keyboard shortcut emulation.- Only one key press needs to be emulated e.g winkey
- More than one key press needs to be emulated e.g winkey + l, alt + f4 etc.
import pyautogui as gui
import os
GEST_START = ("N", "E", "S", "W")
GEST_CLOSE = ("SE", "N", "SW")
GEST_COPY = ("W", "S", "E")
GEST_PASTE = ("SE", "NE")
GEST_CUT = ("SW", "N", "SE")
GEST_ALT_TAB = ("SE", "SW")
GEST_ALT_SHIFT_TAB = ("SW", "SE")
GEST_MAXIMISE = ("N",)
GEST_MINIMISE = ("S",)
GEST_LOCK = ("S", "E")
GEST_TASK_MANAGER = ("E", "W", "S")
GEST_NEW_FILE = ("N", "SE", "N")
GEST_SELECT_ALL = ("NE", "SE", "NW", "W")
# Gesture set containing the directions and the key press actions
GESTURES = {GEST_CUT: ('ctrlleft', 'x'),
GEST_CLOSE: ('altleft', 'f4'),
GEST_ALT_SHIFT_TAB: ('altleft', 'shiftleft', 'tab'),
GEST_PASTE: ('ctrlleft', 'v'),
GEST_ALT_TAB: ('altleft', 'tab'),
GEST_COPY: ('ctrlleft', 'c'),
GEST_NEW_FILE: ('ctrlleft', 'n'),
GEST_SELECT_ALL: ('ctrlleft', 'a')}
# Windows PCs
if os.name == 'nt':
GESTURES[GEST_START] = ('winleft',)
GESTURES[GEST_LOCK] = ('winleft', 'l')
GESTURES[GEST_TASK_MANAGER] = ('ctrlleft', 'shiftleft', 'esc')
# Linux using KDE
else:
GESTURES[GEST_START] = ('altleft', 'f1')
GESTURES[GEST_LOCK] = ('ctrlleft', 'altleft', 'l')
GESTURES[GEST_TASK_MANAGER] = ('ctrlleft', 'esc')
def do_gesture_action(gesture):
if gesture in GESTURES.keys():
keys = list(GESTURES[gesture])
last_key = keys.pop() # get the last key press
if len(keys) >= 1: # case 2
for key in keys: # hold all the keys except the last key
gui.keyDown(key)
gui.press(last_key) # press the last key. for case 1 the last key and the first key are the same
if len(keys) >= 1:
keys.reverse() # un-holding the keys
for key in keys:
gui.keyUp(key)
Conclusion
Yes. And that's about it. Using only 2 files and only image processing we have successfully implemented a very simple and naive gesture recognition system. That too happened within only 200 lines of code. Get the full code here. You can find me on-- Google Plus
- Github(Star this repo if you like it)
- Blogger