Research on the multifaceted aspects of modeling, analysis, and synthesis of - man gesture is receiving growing interest from both the academic and industrial communities. On one hand, recent scienti?c developments on cognition, on - fect/emotion, on multimodal interfaces, and on multimedia have opened new perspectives on the integration of more sophisticated models of gesture in c- putersystems.Ontheotherhand,theconsolidationofnewtechnologiesenabling "disappearing" computers and (multimodal) interfaces to be integrated into the natural environments of users are making it realistic to consider tackling the complex meaning and subtleties of human gesture in multimedia systems, - abling a deeper, user-centered, enhanced physical participation and experience in the human-machine interaction process. The research programs supported by the European Commission and s- eral national institutions and governments individuated in recent years strategic ?elds strictly concerned with gesture research. For example, the DG Infor- tion Society of the European Commission (www.cordis.lu/ist) supports several initiatives, such as the "Disappearing Computer" and "Presence" EU-IST FET (Future and Emerging Technologies), the IST program "Interfaces & Enhanced Audio-Visual Services" (see for example the project MEGA, Multisensory - pressive Gesture Applications, www.megaproject.org), and the IST strategic - jective "Multimodal Interfaces." Several EC projects and other funded research are represented in the chapters of this book. Awiderangeofapplicationscanbene?tfromadvancesinresearchongesture, from consolidated areas such as surveillance to new or emerging ?elds such as therapy and rehabilitation, home consumer goods, entertainment, and aud- visual, cultural and artistic applications, just to mention only a few of them.

Inhalt

Foundational Issues.- Gesture Analysis: Invariant Laws in Movement.- The Features People Use to Recognize Human Movement Style.- Multimodal Analysis of Expressive Gesture in Music and Dance Performances.- Correlation of Gestural Musical Audio Cues and Perceived Expressive Qualities.- Gestural Imagery in the Service of Musical Imagery.- The Interaction of Iconic Gesture and Speech in Talk.- Conceptual and Lexical Factors in the Production of Speech and Conversational Gestures: Neuropsychological Evidence.- The Communicative System of Touch. Alphabet, Lexicon, and Norms of Use.- Some Issues in Sign Language Processing.- Multimodality and Gestures in the Teacher's Communication.- Deixis in Multimodal Human Computer Interaction: An Interdisciplinary Approach.- The Analysis of Gesture: Establishing a Set of Parameters.- Gesture Tracking.- Holistic Body Tracking for Gestural Interfaces.- Recovering Articulated Motion with a Hierarchical Factorization Method.- An Experimental Comparison of Trajectory-Based and History-Based Representation for Gesture Recognition.- Tracking of Real Time Acrobatic Movements by Image Processing.- A Dynamic Model for Real-Time Tracking of Hands in Bimanual Movements.- Gesture Recognition.- Robust Video-Based Recognition of Dynamic Head Gestures in Various Domains - Comparing a Rule-Based and a Stochastic Approach.- Remote Vision-Based Multi-type Gesture Interaction.- Model-Based Motion Filtering for Improving Arm Gesture Recognition Performance.- GesRec3D: A Real-Time Coded Gesture-to-Speech System with Automatic Segmentation and Recognition Thresholding Using Dissimilarity Measures.- Classification of Gesture with Layered Meanings.- Handshapes and Movements: Multiple-Channel American Sign Language Recognition.- Hand Postures Recognition in Large-Display VR Environments.- Developing Task-Specific RBF Hand Gesture Recognition.- Developing Context Sensitive HMM Gesture Recognition.- Database Indexing Methods for 3D Hand Pose Estimation.- Gesture Notation and Synthesis.- Experience with and Requirements for a Gesture Description Language for Synthetic Animation.- The Development of a Computational Notation for Synthesis of Sign and Gesture.- Gesture in Style.- Gestural Mind Markers in ECAs.- Audio Based Real-Time Speech Animation of Embodied Conversational Agents.- Neo Euclide: A Low-Cost System for Performance Animation and Puppetry.- Multimodal Gestural Interfaces.- Gesture Desk - An Integrated Multi-modal Gestural Workplace for Sonification.- Gesture Frame - A Screen Navigation System for Interactive Multimedia Kiosks.- Intuitive Manipulation of a Haptic Monitor for the Gestural Human-Computer Interaction.- Gesturing with Tangible Interfaces for Mixed Reality.- A Procedure for Developing Intuitive and Ergonomic Gesture Interfaces for HCI.- Evaluating Multimodal Interaction Patterns in Various Application Scenarios.- Imitation Games with an Artificial Agent: From Mimicking to Understanding Shape-Related Iconic Gestures.- Gesture Components for Natural Interaction with In-Car Devices.- Gesture in Multimedia and Performing Arts.- Analysis of Expressive Gesture: The EyesWeb Expressive Gesture Processing Library.- Performance Gestures of Musicians: What Structural and Emotional Information Do They Convey?.- Expressiveness of Musician's Body Movements in Performances on Marimba.- Expressive Bowing on a Virtual String Instrument.- Recognition of Musical Gestures in Known Pieces and in Improvisations.- Design and Use of Some New Digital Musical Instruments.- Analysis of a Genuine Scratch Performance.- Conducting Audio Files via Computer Vision.- A Video System for Recognizing Gestures by Artificial Neural Networks for Expressive Musical Control.- Ghost in the Cave - An Interactive Collaborative Game Using Non-verbal Communication.