We present a method for recognition of continuous Korean Sign Language (KSL). In the paper, we consider the segmentation problem of a continuous hand motion pattern in KSL. For this, we first extract sign sentences by removing linking gestures between sign sentences. We use a gesture tension model and fuzzy partitioning. Then, each sign sentence is disassembled into a set of elementary motions (EMs) according to its geometric pattern. The hidden Markov model is adopted to classify the segmented individual EMs.

This paper presents a new neural network structure, called Temporal-CombNET (T-CombNET), dedicated to the time series analysis and classification. It has been developed from a large scale Neural Network structure, CombNET-II, which is designed to deal with a very large vocabulary, such as Japanese character recognition. Our specific modifications of the original CombNET-II model allow it to do temporal analysis, and to be used in large set of human movements recognition system. In T-CombNET structure one of most important parameter to be set is the space division criterion. In this paper we analyze some practical approaches and present an Interclass Distance Measurement based criterion. The T-CombNET performance is analyzed applying to in a practical problem, Japanese Kana finger spelling recognition. The obtained results show a superior recognition rate when compared to different neural network structures, such as Multi-Layer Perceptron, Learning Vector Quantization, Elman and Jordan Partially Recurrent Neural Networks, CombNET-II, k-NN, and the proposed T-CombNET structure.