Abstract
In collaboration systems, collaborators often use hand gestures for showing information relating to a distant object. However, in viewer’s perspective, it is sometimes difficult to know where the conventional gesture cue (Hands-in-Air style: HiA) refers to because the conventional HiA gesture appears away from the distant object. In this paper, we investigate how two factors, distance to the object and view angle difference between collaborators, influence the understanding of HiA gesture by comparing the use of it at 25 positions with 5 distances and 5 view angles. In a user study, we found that the distance to the target object and view angle difference negatively influenced HiA gesture communication. The influence of the distance and view angle was more serious between smaller angles (0~30 degree) than larger angles (30~60 degree), and between shorter distances (1m $\sim 1.5\text{m}$ ) than between longer distance (1.5m $\sim 2\text{m}$ ). As a solution, we propose the Hands-on-Target (HoT) style which positions the hand gesture cue on the surface of the target object. The HoT style gesture cue dramatically reduces the negative effect of the distance and view angle difference. Participants completed the task 29.3 percent faster, selected the correct object 2.75 times more, and felt 63.1 percent less mental effort. For further investigation, we discuss on the extensibility of the HoT interface that it can be used not only for object selection but also for diverse type of gesture communication including gesture for object manipulation because the HoT interface can support all possible real world hand gestures.
Highlights
Hand gestures are a fundamental and natural communication tool [1] in the real world [1], and in technology mediated collaborative environments such as Mixed Reality (MR) remote collaboration [2] and Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) [3]
Many prior research [4][5] have implemented hand gesture communication in CVE or MR collaboration in a way that is similar to how they are used in the real world by visualizing the hands at a relative position to the user’s head and showing hand motions like in real world
Some researchers [4][12][13] implemented an interface supporting a pointer cue and HiA hand gestures so collaborators used the pointer for indicating distant objects and hand gestures for other information
Summary
Hand gestures are a fundamental and natural communication tool [1] in the real world [1], and in technology mediated collaborative environments such as Mixed Reality (MR) remote collaboration [2] and Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) [3]. Many prior research [4][5] have implemented hand gesture communication in CVE or MR collaboration in a way that is similar to how they are used in the real world by visualizing the hands at a relative position to the user’s head and showing hand motions like in real world. This conventional Hands-in-Air (HiA) style hand gesture (Figure 1a and 1b) often provides realistic and natural interaction with objects [6][7]. Similar to using a pointer, eye gaze has been studied for indicating a VOLUME XX, 2017
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
