Hand Gesture Recognition System Using Thermal Images: A Systematic Literature Review

Hand Gesture Recognition System Using Thermal Images: A Systematic Literature Review

Aishwarya Bhandari R

Department of Information Science & Engineering

Malnad College of Engineering Hassan, India aishwaryabhandari05@gmail.com

Monika B S

Department of Information Science & Engineering

Malnad College of Engineering Hassan, India monikabsecomm@gmail.com

Ashika R

Department of Information Science & Engineering

Malnad College of Engineering Hassan, India ashikaramesh626@gmail.com

Rakshitha D

Department of Information Science & Engineering

Malnad College of Engineering Hassan, India rakshithadoddegowda@gmail.com

Mr. Krishna Swaroop A Assistant Professor

Department of Information Science & Engineering

Malnad College of Engineering Hassan, India ksa@mcehassan.ac.in

Abstract— Leading the way in human-computer interaction (HCI) advancements are hand gesture recognition (HGR) systems, which provide touchless, intuitive control for a wide range of applications, including healthcare, smart devices, assistive technologies, and virtual environments. In order to demonstrate the development of HGR methodologies, such as vision-based, skeleton-based, and hybrid approaches, this paper summarizes the results of recent studies. The field is dominated by vision-based systems, which use depth sensors and RGB cameras to recognize both static and dynamic gestures. Particularly for continuous gesture recognition, skeleton-based methods such as the TD-Net architecture offer computationally effective and lightweight solutions. While multimodal systems that combine RGB, thermal, and depth data improve robustness, thermal imaging expands the applicability of HGR to low-light conditions. Despite advancements, problems still exist, such as signer-independent performance, environmental adaptability, and gesture spotting in continuous streams. Directions for the future.

Keywords— Machine learning, Deep learning, Hand Gesture, image processing, Convolutional neural networks, Thermal images.