Detection of direction that a waving action indicates toward a dialog system

Now, the interface environment of information equipments such as computer remains the former style using keyboard and mouse. To allow elder or handicapped people to use such equipments, a system helping them use the equipments much easily is needed. In this paper, a dialog system will be shown which permits both human and computer (hereafter it is called a system) to use verbal/non-verbal communication using voice and behavior. Pointing action is well used when dialog environment is shared between them, but unfortunately the farer the distance between a finger tip and the object to be pointed is, the more ambiguous the meaning of the action is. If some objects are included in a cone emanating from a finger tip, a wrong object may be recognized as a target. When it selects the wrong object, user must inform the system of the mistake using a gesture and utterance. In such a case, waving action is often used to show the direction to search. Different from pointing action, it is difficult to detect the direction to which a hand is waved because velocity analysis is required