Gesture recognition is an appealing tool for natural interface with computers especially for physically impaired persons. In this paper, it is proposed to use Self-organizing maps (SOM) as an image recognition system for gesture recognition, since the SOM allows alleviating many difficulties associated with gesture recognition. It is, however, required for on-line systems to reduce the recognition time to the range of normal video camera rates. To achieve this, the Randomized SOM (RSOM) is introduced. With RSOM algorithm, the recognition time is drastically reduced without accuracy deterioration. The experimental results to recognize hand gestures using RSOM are presented.