I'm asking if there are any ideas of how to cluster different body segments using the depth map from the Kinect device? There are two problems, the first one is how to identify different body parts from each other, for example: lower arm from upper arm. The second one is how to identify a body part if there is an occluded part? I hope if anyone could guide me solve this.
Many Thanks for your kind assistance
You can use skeleton recognition middlewares (e.g. Nite) to get the coordinates of the joints of the body (such as shoulder, elbow, fingertip). After reading the Z (depth) value of the joints, you can consider only the points which has a Z value close to the body joints' Z values.
For example if the middleware tells you that the Z value of the hand is 2000mm, you can safely assume that all the pixels/points that are part of fingers and palm will have a Z value around 1900-2100mm, and the wall or desk behind or in front of the user will have a much different Z value. So you can just disregard any point outside 1900-2100mm.
You should also disregard any points that are far from the joints. For example there might be a book that is exactly 2000mm far from the camera, but located far from the user.
