1. A gesture recognition system for remote control of a device, comprising: (a) a sensor for capturing video data of a user's hand at a location near the device; (b) a processor for processing the captured video data of the hand; and (c) programming executable on said processor for carrying out steps comprising: segmenting each hand image in the captured video based on skin color; extracting one or more parameters of the segmented hand image; tracking the one or more parameters in the hand image; classifying a hand gesture as “open” or “closed” based on the one or more parameters; and operating the device based on recognition of said hand gesture and tracking the position of said one or more parameters.