Patent ID: 8730164

Claim:
A gesture recognition apparatus which controls a display device based on a gesture operation performed by a user in a vicinity of a screen, said gesture recognition apparatus comprising: a picture obtainment unit configured to obtain a picture of the vicinity of the screen; a direction determination unit configured to determine an operational direction based on position information indicating a direction from the screen or said picture obtainment unit toward the user, the operational direction being a direction of a movement to be recognized as the gesture operation; a gesture recognition unit configured to recognize, as the gesture operation, a movement of whole or part of a body of the user with reference to the picture obtained by said picture obtainment unit, the movement being in the operational direction determined by said direction determination unit; and a display control unit configured to control the display device based on the gesture operation recognized by said gesture recognition unit, wherein the picture is taken by a camera, said gesture recognition apparatus further comprises a position obtainment unit configured to obtain, as the position information, a divergence of a direction from the screen or the camera toward the user from an optical axis of the camera or a normal to the screen, and said direction determination unit is configured to determine either a horizontal direction or a vertical direction as the operational direction based on whether or not the divergence exceeds a threshold.