Assessing the effectiveness of direct gesture interaction for a safety critical maritime application

Multi-touch interaction, in particular multi-touch gesture interaction, is widely believed to give a more natural interaction style. We investigated the utility of multi-touch interaction in the safety critical domain of maritime dynamic positioning (DP) vessels. We conducted initial paper prototyping with domain experts to gain an insight into natural gestures; we then conducted observational studies aboard a DP vessel during operational duties and two rounds of formal evaluation of prototypes - the second on a motion platform ship simulator. Despite following a careful user-centred design process, the final results show that traditional touch-screen button and menu interaction was quicker and less erroneous than gestures. Furthermore, the moving environment accentuated this difference and we observed initial use problems and handedness asymmetries on some multi-touch gestures. On the positive side, our results showed that users were able to suspend gestural interaction more naturally, thus improving situational awareness

Exploring the Front Touch Interface for Virtual Reality Headsets

In this paper, we propose a new interface for virtual reality headset: a touchpad in front of the headset. To demonstrate the feasibility of the front touch interface, we built a prototype device, explored VR UI design space expansion, and performed various user studies. We started with preliminary tests to see how intuitively and accurately people can interact with the front touchpad. Then, we further experimented various user interfaces such as a binary selection, a typical menu layout, and a keyboard. Two-Finger and Drag-n-Tap were also explored to find the appropriate selection technique. As a low-cost, light-weight, and in low power budget technology, a touch sensor can make an ideal interface for mobile headset. Also, front touch area can be large enough to allow wide range of interaction types such as multi-finger interactions. With this novel front touch interface, we paved a way to new virtual reality interaction methods

Light on horizontal interactive surfaces: Input space for tabletop computing

In the last 25 years we have witnessed the rise and growth of interactive tabletop research, both in academic and in industrial settings. The rising demand for the digital support of human activities motivated the need to bring computational power to table surfaces. In this article, we review the state of the art of tabletop computing, highlighting core aspects that frame the input space of interactive tabletops: (a) developments in hardware technologies that have caused the proliferation of interactive horizontal surfaces and (b) issues related to new classes of interaction modalities (multitouch, tangible, and touchless). A classification is presented that aims to give a detailed view of the current development of this research area and define opportunities and challenges for novel touch- and gesture-based interactions between the human and the surrounding computational environment. © 2014 ACM.This work has been funded by Integra (Amper Sistemas and CDTI, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) and TIPEx (TIN2010-19859-C03-01) projects and Programa de Becas y Ayudas para la Realización de Estudios Oficiales de Máster y Doctorado en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2010

Sensing and mapping for interactive performance

This paper describes a trans-domain mapping (TDM) framework for translating meaningful activities from one creative domain onto another. The multi-disciplinary framework is designed to facilitate an intuitive and non-intrusive interactive multimedia performance interface that offers the users or performers real-time control of multimedia events using their physical movements. It is intended to be a highly dynamic real-time performance tool, sensing and tracking activities and changes, in order to provide interactive multimedia performances. From a straightforward definition of the TDM framework, this paper reports several implementations and multi-disciplinary collaborative projects using the proposed framework, including a motion and colour-sensitive system, a sensor-based system for triggering musical events, and a distributed multimedia server for audio mapping of a real-time face tracker, and discusses different aspects of mapping strategies in their context. Plausible future directions, developments and exploration with the proposed framework, including stage augmenta tion, virtual and augmented reality, which involve sensing and mapping of physical and non-physical changes onto multimedia control events, are discussed

Direct and gestural interaction with relief: A 2.5D shape display

Actuated shape output provides novel opportunities for experiencing, creating and manipulating 3D content in the physical world. While various shape displays have been proposed, a common approach utilizes an array of linear actuators to form 2.5D surfaces. Through identifying a set of common interactions for viewing and manipulating content on shape displays, we argue why input modalities beyond direct touch are required. The combination of freehand gestures and direct touch provides additional degrees of freedom and resolves input ambiguities, while keeping the locus of interaction on the shape output. To demonstrate the proposed combination of input modalities and explore applications for 2.5D shape displays, two example scenarios are implemented on a prototype system

A Conceptual Framework for Motion Based Music Applications

Imaginary projections are the core of the framework for motion based music applications presented in this paper. Their design depends on the space covered by the motion tracking device, but also on the musical feature involved in the application. They can be considered a very powerful tool because they allow not only to project in the virtual environment the image of a traditional acoustic instrument, but also to express any spatially defined abstract concept. The system pipeline starts from the musical content and, through a geometrical interpretation, arrives to its projection in the physical space. Three case studies involving different motion tracking devices and different musical concepts will be analyzed. The three examined applications have been programmed and already tested by the authors. They aim respectively at musical expressive interaction (Disembodied Voices), tonal music knowledge (Harmonic Walk) and XX century music composition (Hand Composer)