Real-Time Hand Detection and Recognition For Sign Language Beginners Using Skin-Color Modeling and Convolutional Neural Networks

A system was developed that will serve as a learning tool for starters in sign language that involves hand detection. This system is based on a skin-color modeling technique, i.e., explicit skin-color space thresholding. The skin-color range is predetermined that will extract pixels (hand) from non–pixels (background). The images were fed into the model called the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for classification of images. Keras was used for training of images. Provided with proper lighting condition and a uniform background, the system acquired an average testing accuracy of 93.67%, of which 90.04% was attributed to ASL alphabet recognition, 93.44% for number recognition and 97.52% for static word recognition, thus surpassing that of other related studies. The approach is used for fast computation and is done in real time