ofxGVF

Gesture Variation Follower: c++ library and implementation in various creative programming environments. GVF allows for realtime gesture recognition and variation tracking.


GVF started as a research project on novel methods for expressive interaction with digital media through physical gestures. Stemming from academic research, the code remains free and open-source (see licence below). If you use it please cite our work: B Caramiaux, N Montecchio, A Tanaka, F Bevilacqua. Adaptive Gesture Recognition with Variation Estimation for Interactive Systems. ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS), 4(4), 18-51. December 2014


If you woudl like to read about technical details of the method, the article can be downloaded <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2643204?casa_token=3DhlztGkReoAAAAA:kjSIKORvl-FqXNJ2Hms1jTMrB0HNjCRtLr5Q5PlC77jEpq9ncdJbv0nETsAqF2S4qM1C-rbg1TqY">here</a>.

Using GVFlib

Start by constructing a GVF object:

GVF gvf = new GVF();

Recording

To record gesture templates, switch to the learning mode:

setState(GVF::STATE_LEARNING);

Then for each gesture to record, start a new gesture

startGesture();

And feed each gesture point (vector of float values):

addObservation(point);

Following

Once the gestures recorded, switch to the following mode:

setState(GVF::STATE_FOLLOWING);

Start a new gesture to be recognised and its variations tracked:

startGesture();

And perform the recognition + tracking for each observation of the gesture:

update(observation);

Results

To obtain GVF's outputs, declare a variable of type GVFOutcomes:

GVFOutcomes outcomes;

And use this variable to get the output of the update() method:

update(observation);

Documentation/API

http://www.baptistecaramiaux.com/gvf-api/class_g_v_f.html

Examples in creative programming environments

MaxMSP

A compiled version of GVF for MacOSX (>10.8) can be found in max-patches/ together with the help patch.


If needed, to compile the object first clone the MaxSDK by using the provided script:

./getMaxSDK.sh

Then open the Xcode project from xcode/ and build the object.

openFrameworks

We provide an openFrameworks add-on ofxGVF. To use it in your openFrameworks project, copy the ofxGVF folder to the openFrameworks add-on folder. We provide an example of application using GVF to recognise and track 2D gestures.

PureData

A compiled version of GVF for MacOSX (>10.8) is provided together with its help patch.


To compile the GVF PureData object, open a terminal and do:

cd PureData/
make

Note that you need PureData installed on your computer.

Credits

The algorithm has been designed and prototyped in 2011 at Ircam Centre Pompidou Paris (STMS lab Ircam-CNRS-UPMC) by Baptiste Caramiaux and Nicola Montecchio (University of Padova), in the Real-Time Musical Interaction team led by Frédéric Bevilacqua.

It has been extended at Goldsmiths College, University of London, by Baptiste Caramiaux.

The openFrameworks add-on has been greatly done by Matthew Gingold (https://github.com/gameoverhack)

License

GVF library is released under the LGPL v3

GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 3, 29 June 2007

Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <http://fsf.org/>

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

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