A system for hand gesture recognition is described herein. The system includes a display, camera, memory, and processor. The memory that is to store instructions and is communicatively coupled to the camera and the display. The processor is communicatively coupled to the camera, the display, and the memory. When the processor is to execute the instructions, the processor is to estimate one or more motion vectors of an object using a pair of consecutive frames and estimate an average motion vector of the object. The processor is also to obtain a descriptor based on histogram values from a histogram of optical flow (HOOF) of the one or more motion vectors and the average motion vector and classify the descriptor as a gesture.