A programmable data processing circuit is configured for receiving sensor signals indicative of gestures for identification by the processing circuit. The processing circuit applies to the sensor signals finite state machine processing resources to provide identification output signals indicative of gestures identified as a function of the sensor signals. A plurality of finite state machine processing programs loaded into the processing circuit include a data section and an instruction section. The data section including a fixed size part specifying respective processing resources used by the programs in the plurality of finite state machine processing programs and a variable size part with respective sizes for allocating the respective processing resources used by the programs in the plurality of finite state machine processing programs. The instruction section including conditions and commands for execution by the respective processing resources used by the programs by operating on data located in the respective data sections.