Gesture recognition is becoming increasingly popular as an input mechanism for human-computer interfaces. The availability of MEMS (Micro-Electromechanical System) 3-axis linear accelerometers allows for the design of an inexpensive mobile gesture recognition system. Wearable inertial sensors are a low-cost, low-power solution to recognize gestures and, more generally, track the movements of a person. Gesture recognition algorithms have traditionally only been implemented in cases where ample system resources are available, i.e. on desktop computers with fast processors and large amounts of memory. In the cases where a gesture recognition algorithm has been implemented on a resource-constrained device, only the simplest algorithms were implemented to recognize only a small set of gestures. Current gesture recognition technology can be improved by making algorithms faster, more robust, and more accurate. The most dramatic results in optimization are obtained by completely changing an algorithm to decrease the number of computations. Algorithms can also be optimized by profiling or timing the different sections of the algorithm to identify problem areas. Gestures have two aspects of signal characteristics that make them difficult to recognize: segmentation ambiguity and spatio-temporal variability. Segmentation ambiguity refers to not knowing the gesture boundaries, and therefore reference patterns have to be matched with all possible segments of input signals. Spatio-temporal variability refers to the fact that each repetition of the same gesture varies dynamically in shape and duration, even for the same gesturer. The objective of this study was to evaluate the various gesture recognition algorithms currently in use, after which the most suitable algorithm was optimized in order to implement it on a mobile device. Gesture recognition techniques studied include hidden Markov models, artificial neural networks and dynamic time warping. A dataset for evaluating the gesture recognition algorithms was gathered using a mobile device’s embedded accelerometer. The algorithms were evaluated based on computational efficiency, recognition accuracy and storage efficiency. The optimized algorithm was implemented in a user application on the mobile device to test the empirical validity of the study. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted