# UAV-GESTURE: A Dataset for UAV Control and Gesture Recognition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.02602 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02602/

## Key facts

- Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jan 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [TransWeather: Transformer-based Restoration of Images Degraded by Adverse Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14813/) (2021)
- [Capturing, Reconstructing, and Simulating: the UrbanScene3D Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04286/) (2021)
- [UAV-Human: A Large Benchmark for Human Behavior Understanding with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00946/) (2021)
- [UAVs Meet LLMs: Overviews and Perspectives Toward Agentic Low-Altitude Mobility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02341/) (2025)
- [The State of Aerial Surveillance: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03080/) (2022)
- [Synthetic-to-Real Domain Adaptation for Action Recognition: A Dataset and Baseline Performances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10280/) (2023)
- [SocialGesture: Delving into Multi-person Gesture Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02244/) (2025)
- [AZTR: Aerial Video Action Recognition with Auto Zoom and Temporal Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01589/) (2023)
- [Restoring Images Captured in Arbitrary Hybrid Adverse Weather Conditions in One Go](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09996/) (2023)
- [UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles): Diverse Applications of UAV Datasets in Segmentation, Classification, Detection, and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03245/) (2024)
- [G3R: Generating Rich and Fine-grained mmWave Radar Data from 2D Videos for Generalized Gesture Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14934/) (2024)
- [Removing Multiple Hybrid Adverse Weather in Video via a Unified Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06200/) (2025)
- [Beyond the Horizon: Decoupling Multi-View UAV Action Recognition via Partial Order Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20530/) (2025)
- [How do Foundation Models Compare to Skeleton-Based Approaches for Gesture Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20795/) (2025)
- [FR-GESTURE: An RGBD Dataset For Gesture-based Human-Robot Interaction In First Responder Operations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17573/) (2026)
- [On the Evaluation Protocol of Gesture Recognition for UAV-based Rescue Operation based on Deep Learning: A Subject-Independence Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17854/) (2026)
- [Proximal Control of UAVs with Federated Learning for Human-Robot Collaborative Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02863/) (2024)
- [Can Large Language Models Detect Methodological Flaws? Evidence from Gesture Recognition for UAV-Based Rescue Operation Based on Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14161/) (2026)
- [A Deployment Study of Identity-Gated Drone Gesture Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25511/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Current UAV-recorded datasets are mostly limited to action recognition and object tracking, whereas the gesture signals datasets were mostly recorded in indoor spaces. Currently, there is no outdoor recorded public video dataset for UAV commanding signals. Gesture signals can be effectively used with UAVs by leveraging the UAVs visual sensors and operational simplicity. To fill this gap and enable research in wider application areas, we present a UAV gesture signals dataset recorded in an outdoor setting. We selected 13 gestures suitable for basic UAV navigation and command from general aircraft handling and helicopter handling signals. We provide 119 high-definition video clips consisting of 37151 frames. The overall baseline gesture recognition performance computed using Pose-based Convolutional Neural Network (P-CNN) is 91.9 %. All the frames are annotated with body joints and gesture classes in order to extend the dataset's applicability to a wider research area including gesture recognition, action recognition, human pose recognition and situation awareness.