The invention discloses a gesture recognition method and a gesture recognition control-based intelligent wheelchair man-machine system, and relates to the fields of computer vision, man-machine systems and control. The system comprises a video acquisition module, a separator, a query module, a tracking module, a gesture pretreatment module, a characteristic extraction module, a gesture recognition module and a control module. In the method, a hand is tracked by combining a Camshift tracking algorithm with a Kalman filtering algorithm, and a gesture is separated and is recognized by combining Hu moment with a support vector machine (SVM). By the gesture recognition method, the influence of skin color interference, shielding and a peripheral complex environment on gesture segmentation can be eliminated, and the hand is accurately tracked and quickly and accurately recognized; and when the gesture recognition method is used in the gesture recognition control-based intelligent wheelchair man-machine system, the aims of quickly and accurately recognizing a gesture command and safely controlling an intelligent wheelchair can be fulfilled, and the activity range and life quality of old people and disabled people can be improved.