Patent ID: 7308112

Claim:
A computer based method for man-machine interaction comprising the steps of: receiving a digital image of a target, the digital image comprising depth data associated with image pixels, the depth data corresponding to the distance to a camera capturing the digital image; determining a location of a hand of the target within the pixels of the image based on the depth data associated with each of the pixels and a shape of the target; pre-processing the digital image of the target by matching a candidate shape of the target captured in the digital image with a stored shape image from a plurality of shape images by comparing one or more of the plurality of stored shape images with the candidate shape, wherein comparing includes forming a vector with the depth data associated with each of the pixels associated with the candidate shape and computing a match based on a matrix of projection coefficient vectors representing the plurality of stored shape images; and matching a candidate shape of the hand by generating a skeleton representation of the hand from the image pixel data of the location of the hand and determining one or more hand attributes from the skeleton representation, including at least a number of fingers.