Two-Finger 3D Rotations for Novice Users: Surjective and Integral Interactions

International audienceNow that 3D interaction is available on tablets and smart phones, it becomes critical to provide efficient 3D interaction techniques for novice users. This paper investigates interaction techniques for 3D rotation with two fingers of a single hand, on multitouch mobile devices. We introduce two new rotation techniques that allow integral control of the 3 axes of rotation. These techniques also satisfy a new criterion that we introduce: surjection. We ran a study to compare the new techniques with two widely used rotation techniques from the literature. Results indicate that surjection and integration lead to a performance improvement of a group of participants who had no prior experience in 3D interaction. Qualitative results also indicate participants' preference for the new interaction techniques

The spheroidal trackball: generalising the fixed trackball for virtual camera navigation

Virtual trackball techniques have become a standard in 3D applications, particularly for interfaces with limited degrees of freedom such as touchscreens or mice. The fact that we are used to them does not mean that they cannot be improved upon. Recent research has highlighted the significance of considering users’ mental models of a preferred rotation axis, as it can improve performance, perceived usability and perceived workload. Building upon these findings, this paper introduces the spheroidal trackball framework—a novel method for orbiting the virtual camera around elongated objects. The paper presents the mathematical formulation and the evaluation of the technique. The formulation offers enough information to implement the approach. The evaluation shows the advantages of this approach over the fixed spherical trackball for this class of objects, in terms of task performance, usability and perceived workload. This research constitutes an advancement in the refinement of 3D user interaction techniques, opening new avenues of innovation in this still evolving field.Funding for open access charge: Universidad Málaga/CBUA. This work was partially supported by the PLUGGY project (https://www.pluggy-project.eu/), European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 726765, and the Spanish National Project SAVLab, under grant No. PID2019-107854GB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/ 501100011033/ FEDER UE. The data and the application used to conduct the experiment are available upon request

Design of a Bio-Inspired 3D Orientation Coordinate System and Application in Robotised Tele-Sonography

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A Comparison of Interactive Shadows and Multi-View Layouts for Mouse-based 3D Modelling

3D user interfaces allow users to view and interact with objects in a 3D scene and form a key component in many modelling applications used in engineering, medicine and design. Most mouse-based interfaces follow the same multi-view layout (three orthogonal, one perspective). This interface is difficult to understand, as it requires users to integrate all four views and build a 3D mental model. An alternative, Interactive Shadows, has been previously proposed that could improve on the multi-view's shortcomings but has never been formally tested. This paper presents the first quantitative user evaluation (n = 36) of both the multi-view and interactive shadows interfaces to compare their relative effectiveness and usability. Participants completed three types of tasks designed to be representative of object manipulation in current 3D modelling software. Interactive shadows were significantly better (p < 0,05) for tasks requiring participants to estimate distance. This suggests interactive shadows interface might better help users approximate relative object positioning

Viewpoint manipulations for 3D visualizations of smart buildings

Abstract. This thesis covers the design and implementation of a new single-input viewpoint manipulation technique aimed for a specific use case. The design of the technique is made based on previous literature. The objective of the research is to assess whether a single-input viewpoint manipulation technique can be as efficient as a multi-input viewpoint manipulation technique when used for observing a three dimensional (3D) model of a smart building. After checking the existing literature about basics of viewpoint manipulation, it was decided to design a single-input viewpoint manipulation technique that can be used on a wide range of hardware including touch screen devices not capable of multi-touch input and personal computers with a regular mouse. A 3D visualization of a nursing home was implemented to be viewed with the new technique. The nursing home in question is a smart house with sensors deployed in it, and sensor data is visualized in the 3D model. Aside from the new single-touch technique, a commonly used multi-touch technique was also implemented in order to compare the single-touch technique against it. Participants were recruited and user tests were made to find issues with the system. The yielded results indicate some clear points in the new technique that can be improved for future research.Tiivistelmä. Tämä työ kuvaa suunnittelu- ja implementaatioprosessin kuvakulmien manipulointiin tarkoitetulle uudenlaiselle yhden sormen (single-touch) syöttöjärjestelmälle. Suunnittelu pohjautuu aiempaan tutkimukseen. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on arvioida, onko yhden sormen järjestelmä yhtä tehokas monen sormen (multi-touch) järjestelmään verrattuna, kun kohteena on kolmiulotteinen (3D) malli älykkäästä rakennuksesta. Aiempiin tutkimuksiin nojaten yhden sormen järjestelmään päädyttiin, koska se tukisi suurempaa laitekantaa monen sormen järjestelmiin verrattuna. Työssä kehitettiin hoitokotia esittävä älyrakennuksen 3D-malli, jota käytettiin järjestelmän tarkastelemiseen. Kyseinen hoitokoti on anturointia sisältävä älykäs rakennus; 3D-mallia käytettiin anturidatan visualisoimiseen. Koejärjestelyissä käytettiin tavanomaista monen sormen järjestelmää vertailukohtana kehitettyyn järjestelmään. Vertailu tehtiin koehenkilöiden ja käyttäjätestien avulla. Tuloksista paljastui ominaisuuksia, joita tulisi parantaa järjestelmän tulevissa versioissa

Still room for improvement in traditional 3D interaction: selecting the fixed axis in the virtual trackball

Virtual trackball techniques are widely used when 3D interaction is performed through interfaces with a reduced number of degrees of freedom such as mice and touchscreens. For decades, most implementations fix a vertical axis of rotation, which is a suitable choice when the vertical axis should indeed be fixed, according to some mental model of the user. We conducted an experiment involving the use of a mouse and a touch device to study usability in terms of performance, perceived usability and mental workload when selecting different fixed axes in accordance with the user’s mental model. The results we obtained indicate that the consistency between the axis fixed by the technique and the object’s intrinsic axis has a positive effect on usability. We believe that implementations that allow to select different fixed axis for each specific object should be considered when designing future reduced-DoF interaction interfaces.This work was supported by the PLUGGY project (https://www.pluggyproject.eu/), within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under grant agreement No 726765. The data and the application used to conduct the experiment are available upon request. Open Access funding provided by Universidad de Málaga/CBUA in the framework of the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Natur

Evaluation of haptic virtual reality user interfaces for medical marking on 3D models

Three-dimensional (3D) visualization has been widely used in computer-aided medical diagnosis and planning. To interact with 3D models, current user interfaces in medical systems mainly rely on the traditional 2D interaction techniques by employing a mouse and a 2D display. There are promising haptic virtual reality (VR) interfaces which can enable intuitive and realistic 3D interaction by using VR equipment and haptic devices. However, the practical usability of the haptic VR interfaces in this medical field remains unexplored. In this study, we propose two haptic VR interfaces, a vibrotactile VR interface and a kinesthetic VR interface, for medical diagnosis and planning on volumetric medical images. The vibrotactile VR interface used a head-mounted VR display as the visual output channel and a VR controller with vibrotactile feedback as the manipulation tool. Similarly, the kinesthetic VR interface used a head-mounted VR display as the visual output channel and a kinesthetic force-feedback device as the manipulation tool. We evaluated these two VR interfaces in an experiment involving medical marking on 3D models, by comparing them with the present state-of-the-art 2D interface as the baseline. The results showed that the kinesthetic VR interface performed the best in terms of marking accuracy, whereas the vibrotactile VR interface performed the best in terms of task completion time. Overall, the participants preferred to use the kinesthetic VR interface for the medical task.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Evaluating 3D pointing techniques

"This dissertation investigates various issues related to the empirical evaluation of 3D pointing interfaces. In this context, the term ""3D pointing"" is appropriated from analogous 2D pointing literature to refer to 3D point selection tasks, i.e., specifying a target in three-dimensional space. Such pointing interfaces are required for interaction with virtual 3D environments, e.g., in computer games and virtual reality. Researchers have developed and empirically evaluated many such techniques. Yet, several technical issues and human factors complicate evaluation. Moreover, results tend not to be directly comparable between experiments, as these experiments usually use different methodologies and measures. Based on well-established methods for comparing 2D pointing interfaces this dissertation investigates different aspects of 3D pointing. The main objective of this work is to establish methods for the direct and fair comparisons between 2D and 3D pointing interfaces. This dissertation proposes and then validates an experimental paradigm for evaluating 3D interaction techniques that rely on pointing. It also investigates some technical considerations such as latency and device noise. Results show that the mouse outperforms (between 10% and 60%) other 3D input techniques in all tested conditions. Moreover, a monoscopic cursor tends to perform better than a stereo cursor when using stereo display, by as much as 30% for deep targets. Results suggest that common 3D pointing techniques are best modelled by first projecting target parameters (i.e., distance and size) to the screen plane.