Gesture recognition, as a core technology of human–computer interaction, has broad application prospects and brings new technical possibilities for smart homes, medical care, sports training, and other fields. Compared with the traditional human–computer interaction models based on PC use with keyboards and mice, gesture recognition-based human–computer interaction modes can transmit information more naturally, flexibly, and intuitively, which has become a research hotspot in the field of human–computer interaction in recent years. This paper described the current status of gesture recognition technology, summarized the principles and development history of electromagnetic wave sensor recognition, stress sensor recognition, electromyographic sensor recognition, and visual sensor recognition, and summarized the improvement of this technology by researchers in recent years through the direction of sensor structure, selection of characteristic signals, the algorithm of signal processing, etc. By sorting out and comparing the typical cases of the four implementations, the advantages and disadvantages of each implementation and the application scenarios were discussed from the two aspects of dataset size and accuracy. Based on the abovementioned discussion, the problems and challenges of current gesture recognition technology were discussed in terms of the biocompatibility of sensor structures, wearability and adaptability, stability, robustness, and crossover of signal acquisition and analysis algorithms, and the future development directions in this field were proposed.