Radar-based gesture recognition simulation for unmanned aerial vehicles command interpretation

Abstract

Radar-based gesture recognition has emerged as a robust alternative to vision-based systems, particularly in environments where lighting and privacy pose challenges. This study presents a simulation approach for recognizing hand gestures to control unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using radar signals. Five discrete gestures, i.e., TakeOff, Land, MoveForward, TurnLeft, and stop, were defined and modeled in MATLAB to generate synthetic radar signals. From each sample, four time-frequency domain features were extracted: duration, maximum amplitude, dominant frequency, and root mean square (RMS). A dataset of 500 samples (100 per class) was classified using three supervised learning models: support vector machine (SVM), k-nearest neighbors (k-NN), and decision tree. The k-NN classifier achieved the highest accuracy of 96%, demonstrating the feasibility of lightweight classifiers for gesture recognition using low-complexity features. These results highlight the potential of radar-based interfaces to replace traditional remote controls in UAV operation. The proposed simulation framework contributes to the development of intuitive, non-contact human-machine interaction systems.