Hands-free Head-movement Gesture Recognition using Artificial Neural Networks and the Magnified Gradient Function

This paper presents a hands-free head-movement gesture classification system using a Neural Network employing the Magnified Gradient Function (MGF) algorithm. The MGF increases the rate of convergence by magnifying the first order derivative of the activation function, whilst guaranteeing convergence. The MGF is tested on able-bodied and disabled users to measure its accuracy and performance. It is shown that for able-bodied users, a classification improvement from 98.25% to 99.85% is made, and 92.08% to 97.50% for disabled users.