Novel Interaction Techniques Based on a Combination of Hand and Foot Gestures in Tabletop Environments

摘要

Interactive tables, or tabletop devices, employ multi-finger gestures to interact with digital contents on a table's surface. Many studies have confirmed the convenience and intuitiveness of multi-finger gestures performed with the hands. However, there are still some tasks which cannot be conducted effectively by users via two-handed or multi-finger gestures. Given that feet are used occasionally in the real world to support the hands in the performance of complex tasks such as driving a car, we considered that it might be useful to combine foot gestures with hand gestures to enhance user interactions with tabletop environments. In this study, we developed a high-resolution foot sensing platform based on multi-touch techniques known as frustrated total internal reflection and diffused illumination. We then used the device to study the effect of combining hand and foot gestures on tabletop systems by using a 3D drawing application. We conducted user evaluations to compare foot gestures and identified which gestures were most comfortable for performing a 3D model rotation task. We also compared the performance in a 3D drawing task when using only hand gestures with the performance when using hand and foot gestures together. Finally, we discussed how hand and foot gesture combination techniques could provide new user experiences in tabletop environments.