This paper presents a novel technique for recognizing the gestures as well as symbols made by hand via humancomputer interaction. The main objective is to explore the power of image processing techniques of MATLAB to recognize the gestures made by a human hand. The image of the gesture of hand is captured and processes through stages like image processing, gesture extraction and identification. The first stage extracts the image of hand and separates it from the background. In the next step, the gesture is processed and other noises are filtered and in the third step the gesture is matched with the set of data which is predefined and stored in the database. After the hand gestures are processed and recognized using various techniques and functions, the command that the gesture represents is send to the Arduino based bot which moves accordingly. In addition to the left, right, move and stop commands, the Arduino bot is capable of recognizing the obstacles that comes in the way or come very near to the bot. If the obstacle is detected, the Arduino bot stops moving even if the command is given to it in order to avoid accidents. © 2006-2016 Asian Research Publishing Network (ARPN).