Gestures are an important form of non-verbal communication that involve visible bodily motions. The document discusses the history and development of gesture recognition technologies, describing early data gloves and videoplace systems as well as current technologies like Cepal and ADITI that help people with disabilities control devices with gestures. It also outlines the key components of a gesture recognition system including modeling, analysis, and recognition of gestures and discusses classification methods like HMMs and MLPs. Applications discussed include virtual keyboards, navigaze, and Sixth Sense technology.