FiGaRo: A Framework for Gesture-based Interface Development

Building a hand gesture-based interface for arbitrary applications is time consuming for the developers. It has a steep learning curve because of the complexity of hand gesture recognition algorithms. In addition, developers lack tools for designing and formalizing hand gesture-based interfaces. Another developer challenge is to offer customizable gesture-based interfaces to users, so that they can adapt the gestures and make them easy to memorize.

This dissertation introduces FIGARO, a framework for the development of hand gesture-based interfaces. Its goal is to flatten the learning curve and to enable faster development of gesture-based user interfaces for arbitrary applications. FIGARO facilitates the definition and recognition of new hand gestures. It was designed to be extensible with respect to hand gestures and hand gesture recognition algorithms. FIGARO is based on GIML, a metamodel that allows formalization of hand gesture-based interfaces.

The viability of the FIGARO framework was evaluated through the development of gesture-based interfaces for four legacy applications. The applications originate from four domains: education, entertainment, smart environment control and medical equipment operation. The goal was to demonstrate that FIGARO can be used for the development of gesture-based interfaces for arbitrary applications.