Interactive Spaces Natural interfaces supporting gestures and manipulations in interactive spaces

This doctoral dissertation focuses on the development of interactive spaces through the use of natural interfaces based on gestures and manipulative actions. In the real world people use their senses to perceive the external environment and they use manipulations and gestures to explore the world around them, communicate and interact with other individuals. From this perspective the use of natural interfaces that exploit the human sensorial and explorative abilities helps filling the gap between physical and digital world. In the first part of this thesis we describe the work made for improving interfaces and devices for tangible, multi touch and free hand interactions. The idea is to design devices able to work also in uncontrolled environments, and in situations where control is mostly of the physical type where even the less experienced users can express their manipulative exploration and gesture communication abilities. We also analyze how it can be possible to mix these techniques to create an interactive space, specifically designed for teamwork where the natural interfaces are distributed in order to encourage collaboration. We then give some examples of how these interactive scenarios can host various types of applications facilitating, for instance, the exploration of 3D models, the enjoyment of multimedia contents and social interaction. Finally we discuss our results and put them in a wider context, focusing our attention particularly on how the proposed interfaces actually improve people’s lives and activities and the interactive spaces become a place of aggregation where we can pursue objectives that are both personal and shared with others

Interactive Spaces Natural interfaces supporting gestures and manipulations in interactive spaces

This doctoral dissertation focuses on the development of interactive spaces through the use of natural interfaces based on gestures and manipulative actions. In the real world people use their senses to perceive the external environment and they use manipulations and gestures to explore the world around them, communicate and interact with other individuals. From this perspective the use of natural interfaces that exploit the human sensorial and explorative abilities helps filling the gap between physical and digital world. In the first part of this thesis we describe the work made for improving interfaces and devices for tangible, multi touch and free hand interactions. The idea is to design devices able to work also in uncontrolled environments, and in situations where control is mostly of the physical type where even the less experienced users can express their manipulative exploration and gesture communication abilities. We also analyze how it can be possible to mix these techniques to create an interactive space, specifically designed for teamwork where the natural interfaces are distributed in order to encourage collaboration. We then give some examples of how these interactive scenarios can host various types of applications facilitating, for instance, the exploration of 3D models, the enjoyment of multimedia contents and social interaction. Finally we discuss our results and put them in a wider context, focusing our attention particularly on how the proposed interfaces actually improve people’s lives and activities and the interactive spaces become a place of aggregation where we can pursue objectives that are both personal and shared with others

Gestures and cooperation: considering non verbal communication in the design of interactive spaces

This dissertation explores the role of gestures in computer supported collaboration. People make extensive use of non-verbal forms of communication when they interact with each other in everyday life: of these, gestures are relatively easy to observe and quantify. However, the role of gestures in human computer interaction so far has been focused mainly on using conventional signs like visible commands, rather than on exploiting all nuances of such natural human skill. We propose a perspective on natural interaction that builds on recent advances in tangible interaction, embodiment and computer supported collaborative work. We consider the social and cognitive aspects of gestures and manipulations to support our claim of a primacy of tangible and multi-touch interfaces, and describe our experiences focused on assessing the suitability of such interface paradigms to traditional application scenarios. We describe our design and prototype of an interactive space for group-work, in which natural interfaces, such as tangible user interfaces and multi-touch screens, are deployed so as to foster and encourage collaboration. We show that these interfaces can lead to an improvement in performances and that such improvements appear related to an increase of the gestures performed by the users. We also describe the progress on the state of the art that have been necessary to implement such tools on commodity hardware and deploy them in a relatively uncontrolled environment. Finally, we discuss our findings and frame them in the broader context of embodied interaction, drawing useful implications for interactions design, with emphasis on how to enhance the activity of people in their workplace, home, school, etc. supported in their individual and collaborative tasks by natural interfaces

Expanding tangible tabletop interfaces beyond the display

L’augment de popularitat de les taules i superfícies interactives està impulsant la recerca i la innovació en una gran varietat d’àrees, incloent-­‐hi maquinari, programari, disseny de la interacció i noves tècniques d’interacció. Totes, amb l’objectiu de promoure noves interfícies dotades d’un llenguatge més ric, potent i natural. Entre totes aquestes modalitats, la interacció combinada a sobre i per damunt de la superfície de la taula mitjançant tangibles i gestos és actualment una àrea molt prometedora. Aquest document tracta d’expandir les taules interactives més enllà de la superfície per mitjà de l’exploració i el desenvolupament d’un sistema o dispositiu enfocat des de tres vessants diferents: maquinari, programari i disseny de la interacció. Durant l’inici d’aquest document s’estudien i es resumeixen els diferents trets característics de les superfícies interactives tangibles convencionals o 2D i es presenten els treballs previs desenvolupats per l’autor en solucions de programari que acaben resultant en aplicacions que suggereixen l’ús de la tercera dimensió a les superfícies tangibles. Seguidament, es presenta un repàs del maquinari existent en aquest tipus d’interfícies per tal de concebre un dispositiu capaç de detectar gestos i generar visuals per sobre de la superfície, per introduir els canvis realitzats a un dispositiu existent, desenvolupat i cedit per Microsoft Reseach Cambridge. Per tal d’explotar tot el potencial d’aquest nou dispositiu, es desenvolupa un nou sistema de visió per ordinador que estén el seguiment d’objectes i mans en una superfície 2D a la detecció de mans, dits i etiquetes amb sis graus de llibertat per sobre la superfície incloent-­‐hi la interacció tangible i tàctil convencional a la superfície. Finalment, es presenta una eina de programari per a generar aplicacions per al nou sistema i es presenten un seguit d’aplicacions per tal de provar tot el desenvolupament generat al llarg de la tesi que es conclou presentant un seguit de gestos tant a la superfície com per sobre d’aquesta i situant-­‐los en una nova classificació que alhora recull la interacció convencional 2D i la interacció estesa per damunt de la superfície desenvolupada.The rising popularity of interactive tabletops and surfaces is spawning research and innovation in a wide variety of areas, including hardware and software technologies, interaction design and novel interaction techniques, all of which seek to promote richer, more powerful and more natural interaction modalities. Among these modalities, combined interaction on and above the surface, both with gestures and with tangible objects, is a very promising area. This dissertation is about expanding tangible and tabletops surfaces beyond the display by exploring and developing a system from the three different perspectives: hardware, software, and interaction design. This dissertation, studies and summarizes the distinctive affordances of conventional 2D tabletop devices, with a vast literature review and some additional use cases developed by the author for supporting these findings, and subsequently explores the novel and not yet unveiled potential affordances of 3D-­‐augmented tabletops. It overviews the existing hardware solutions for conceiving such a device, and applies the needed hardware modifications to an existing prototype developed and rendered to us by Microsoft Research Cambridge. For accomplishing the interaction purposes, it is developed a vision system for 3D interaction that extends conventional 2D tabletop tracking for the tracking of hand gestures, 6DoF markers and on-­‐surface finger interaction. It finishes by conceiving a complete software framework solution, for the development and implementation of such type of applications that can benefit from these novel 3D interaction techniques, and implements and test several software prototypes as proof of concepts, using this framework. With these findings, it concludes presenting continuous tangible interaction gestures and proposing a novel classification for 3D tangible and tabletop gestures

Evaluation of Physical Finger Input Properties for Precise Target Selection

The multitouch tabletop display provides a collaborative workspace for multiple users around a table. Users can perform direct and natural multitouch interaction to select target elements using their bare fingers. However, physical size of fingertip varies from one person to another which generally introduces a fat finger problem. Consequently, it creates the imprecise selection of small size target elements during direct multitouch input. In this respect, an attempt is made to evaluate the physical finger input properties i.e. contact area and shape in the context of imprecise selection

Multi-touch Detection and Semantic Response on Non-parametric Rear-projection Surfaces

The ability of human beings to physically touch our surroundings has had a profound impact on our daily lives. Young children learn to explore their world by touch; likewise, many simulation and training applications benefit from natural touch interactivity. As a result, modern interfaces supporting touch input are ubiquitous. Typically, such interfaces are implemented on integrated touch-display surfaces with simple geometry that can be mathematically parameterized, such as planar surfaces and spheres; for more complicated non-parametric surfaces, such parameterizations are not available. In this dissertation, we introduce a method for generalizable optical multi-touch detection and semantic response on uninstrumented non-parametric rear-projection surfaces using an infrared-light-based multi-camera multi-projector platform. In this paradigm, touch input allows users to manipulate complex virtual 3D content that is registered to and displayed on a physical 3D object. Detected touches trigger responses with specific semantic meaning in the context of the virtual content, such as animations or audio responses. The broad problem of touch detection and response can be decomposed into three major components: determining if a touch has occurred, determining where a detected touch has occurred, and determining how to respond to a detected touch. Our fundamental contribution is the design and implementation of a relational lookup table architecture that addresses these challenges through the encoding of coordinate relationships among the cameras, the projectors, the physical surface, and the virtual content. Detecting the presence of touch input primarily involves distinguishing between touches (actual contact events) and hovers (near-contact proximity events). We present and evaluate two algorithms for touch detection and localization utilizing the lookup table architecture. One of the algorithms, a bounded plane sweep, is additionally able to estimate hover-surface distances, which we explore for interactions above surfaces. The proposed method is designed to operate with low latency and to be generalizable. We demonstrate touch-based interactions on several physical parametric and non-parametric surfaces, and we evaluate both system accuracy and the accuracy of typical users in touching desired targets on these surfaces. In a formative human-subject study, we examine how touch interactions are used in the context of healthcare and present an exploratory application of this method in patient simulation. A second study highlights the advantages of touch input on content-matched physical surfaces achieved by the proposed approach, such as decreases in induced cognitive load, increases in system usability, and increases in user touch performance. In this experiment, novice users were nearly as accurate when touching targets on a 3D head-shaped surface as when touching targets on a flat surface, and their self-perception of their accuracy was higher

Gestures and Interaction: exploiting natural abilities in the design of interactive systems

Collana seminari interni 2012, Number 20120606.This talk explores the role of gestures in computer supported collaboration. People make extensive use of non-verbal forms of communication when they interact with each other in everyday life: of these, gestures are relatively easy to observe and quantify. However, the role of gestures in human computer interaction so far has been focused mainly on using conventional signs like visible commands, rather than on exploiting all nuances of such natural human skill. We propose a perspective on natural interaction that builds on recent advances in tangible interaction, embodiment and computer supported collaborative work. We consider the social and cognitive aspects of gestures and manipulations to support our claim of a primacy of tangible and multi-touch interfaces, and describe our experiences focused on assessing the suitability of such interface paradigms to traditional application scenarios

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