Abstract
In many co-located, collaborative systems there is a need for the constituent devices used to be aware of the physical positions of their networked counterparts. This paper addresses this challenge by presenting a novel method of utilising users’ judgement of direction to obtain the location and orientation of a touch interface. The technique requires a user to draw several arrows on an interface which point towards physical landmarks in an environment. This allows for the setup of interface locations in a way which is (i) quick; (ii) inexpensive; (iii) not encumbering; and (iv) capable of being performed despite obstructions in the environment. A user study is presented which investigates what influence a user’s accuracy has on the technique’s resulting calculated location of an interface. The study reveals that the magnitude of a user’s inaccuracies is proportional to the size of the error in the result and that there is no improvement in user accuracy with practice. Finally, we make observations on the future extension and application of this technique.
Highlights
Direct-touch interfaces provide an effective digital medium in which people can collaborate on a broad range of tasks [1]
When multiple interfaces capable of interacting with each other are used, an opportunity arises for collaboration between users interacting with different interfaces; this use of multiple interface types in a shared environment can be beneficial for collaboration [5, 6]
When the item arrives on the target interface, the framework can use its knowledge of the interface locations to ensure the item travels into view from the direction of the source interface
Summary
Direct-touch interfaces provide an effective digital medium in which people can collaborate on a broad range of tasks [1]. The physical locations of interfaces can be used to aid tasks involving interaction between networked devices One example of this is demonstrated in the SynergyNet project, a software framework built for use on direct-touch interfaces, multitouch tabletops, which allows users to perform a flicking gesture to transfer content [7]. When the item arrives on the target interface, the framework can use its knowledge of the interface locations to ensure the item travels into view from the direction of the source interface This is intended to aid users in identifying from where newly arrived content items were sent. The use of RFID chips [10] is one such technological approach These devices are inexpensive and can be used to obtain the positional information of the object to which they are attached. The same trade-off between expense and accuracy is present for similar technologies using electromagnetic frequencies, such as wi-fi [11]
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