PathSync: Multi-User Gestural Interaction with Touchless Rhythmic Path Mimicry

2016. Marcus Carter, Eduardo Velloso, John Downs, Abigail Sellen, Kenton O'Hara & Frank Vetere
Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Abstract

In this paper, we present PathSync, a novel, distal and multi-user mid-air gestural technique based on the principle of rhythmic path mimicry; by replicating the movement of a screen-represented pattern with their hand, users can intuitively interact with digital objects quickly, and with a high level of accuracy. We present three studies that each contribute (1) improvements to how correlation is calculated in path-mimicry techniques necessary for touchless interaction, (2) a validation of its efficiency in comparison to existing techniques, and (3) a demonstration of its intuitiveness and multi-user capacity 'in the wild'. Our studies consequently demonstrate PathSync's potential as an immediately legitimate alternative to existing techniques, with key advantages for public display and multi-user applications.

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Citation

Carter, M., Velloso, E., Downs, J., Sellen, A., O'Hara, K., & Vetere, F. (2016). Pathsync: multi-user gestural interaction with touchless rhythmic path mimicry. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3415–3427). New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858284, doi:10.1145/2858036.2858284

BibTeX

@inproceedings{10.1145/2858036.2858284,
author = {Carter, Marcus and Velloso, Eduardo and Downs, John and Sellen, Abigail and O'Hara, Kenton and Vetere, Frank},
title = {PathSync: Multi-User Gestural Interaction with Touchless Rhythmic Path Mimicry},
year = {2016},
isbn = {9781450333627},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858284},
doi = {10.1145/2858036.2858284},
abstract = {In this paper, we present PathSync, a novel, distal and multi-user mid-air gestural technique based on the principle of rhythmic path mimicry; by replicating the movement of a screen-represented pattern with their hand, users can intuitively interact with digital objects quickly, and with a high level of accuracy. We present three studies that each contribute (1) improvements to how correlation is calculated in path-mimicry techniques necessary for touchless interaction, (2) a validation of its efficiency in comparison to existing techniques, and (3) a demonstration of its intuitiveness and multi-user capacity 'in the wild'. Our studies consequently demonstrate PathSync's potential as an immediately legitimate alternative to existing techniques, with key advantages for public display and multi-user applications.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
pages = {3415–3427},
numpages = {13},
keywords = {kinect, pathsync, touchless interaction},
location = {San Jose, California, USA},
series = {CHI '16}
}