1. A method comprising: defining a distance from an imaging device as a gesture acceptance border, wherein the distance of the gesture acceptance border from the imaging device is user adjustable independent of a position of the user, and wherein a user is between the imaging device and the gesture acceptance border; defining a gesture acceptance space beyond the gesture acceptance border; providing an alert in response to detecting a user's hand moving through the gesture acceptance border; training a gesture controlled system to recognize a user's hand position and movement within the gesture acceptance space; associating, with a processor, each of the trained hand positions and movements with a control command or function; segmenting the gesture acceptance space into slices for analysis of an image; and recognizing a user's hand position and movement by: computing a distance between each of a plurality of sampling points on a hand image contour and a center point on the image, computing a mean distance from the plurality of distances, and computing a mean variance of the plurality of distances.