Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
movements are characterized by distinctive transient force signals from the floor
sensors, due to the reaction forces the user generates when moving. A larger gestural
vocabulary based on such movements could include crouching, jumping, leaning and
tapping. Such movements are accompanied by force impulses as the user lifts and
moves his or her body weight.
In order to compensate for variations in the timing, manner, and intensity of
gesture execution, we use standard techniques from time series recognition, based
on the dynamic time warping family of algorithms. Since the starting time of gestures
is unknown, we dynamically spot gestures on a running window of data acquired
continuously from the sensors, so that users may execute gestures to control the
interface in a manner that is unconstrained with respect to the timing of execution.
17.5 Conclusions
This chapter reviewed approaches to interacting with computationally augmented
ground surfaces, for purposes such as those of realizing virtual ground material
simulations or foot-based touch surface interfaces. Several technical techniques for
enabling such simulations were reviewed, and we described in detail one approach
based on a distributed, multimodal floor interface that is capable of directly captur-
ing foot-floor contact information via intrinsic force sensors. It presented interaction
methods that are low in cost and complexity, and that can be made accessible to
multiple users without requiring body-worn markers or equipment. In addition, this
chapter presented examples in which these interaction techniques are used to real-
ize generic virtual control surfaces or navigation interfaces for virtual reality or for
immersive geospatial data navigation. Further issues related to the interactive ren-
dering of multisensory simulations of virtual ground surfaces are reviewed in detail
in Chap.
12
of this topic. We also discussed guidelines for the use of such a display,
including several factors that have been studied in the context of empirical usabil-
ity evaluations from foot-based human-computer interaction and ergonomics. It is
therefore hoped that this contribution succeeds in demonstrating a range of potential
uses and design considerations for floor-based touch surfaces in virtual reality and
human-computer interaction.
References
1. Addlesee MD, Jones AH, Livesey F, Samaria FS (1997) The ORL active floor. IEEE Pers
Commun 4(5):35-51
2. Agrawal P, Rauschert I, Inochanon K, Bolelli L, Fuhrmann S, Brewer I, Cai G, MacEachren
A, Sharma R (2004) Multimodal interface platform for geographical information systems
(GEOMIP) in crisis management. In: ICMI '04: Proceedings of the 6th international conference
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