Multi-touch Platform Research Articles

Employing intergroup competition in multitouch design-based learning to foster student engagement, learning achievement, and creativity

This study developed an intergroup competition mechanism and integrated it into a multitouch platform for collaborative design-based learning (DBL) to enhance elementary school students’ engagement, learning achievement, and creativity. A total of 58 elementary school students in 2 sixth-grade classes participated in the study over a period of 9 weeks. A quasi-experiment was conducted to examine the effects of the intergroup competition mechanism. The two classes were divided into an experimental group (a class of 28 students in collaboration with intergroup competition) and a comparison group (another class of 30 students in collaboration without intergroup competition), and the students in both groups were required to carry out a tessellation design project with their partners on the multitouch platform. Statistical analyses revealed that students under the intergroup competition condition had significantly better student engagement, learning achievement, and creativity than those under the no-competition condition. The results suggest that the computerized intergroup competition mechanism is effective in enhancing student engagement, learning achievement, and creativity. On the basis of the results, considerations in relation to the intergroup competition mechanism and the enhanced cognitive processes in multitouch DBL are discussed.

A Novel HCI Platform for Power Control System

In this paper we present a novel HCI (human-computer interaction) system and develop a prototype based on the characteristics of the power control system. This system includes multi-touch input module, laser pointer input module and arc projection-based tiled display module. Users can use their fingers, gestures and laser pointers to control the multi-touch platform; they can also use laser pointers to control the arc projection display system and see the feedback results through the multi-touch projection display and arc projection display. The system can make the power control system more effective and convenient because of its natural and comfortable interaction mode as well as its multi-user feature.

Establishing a baseline for text entry for a multi-touch virtual keyboard

Multi-touch, which has been heralded as a revolution in human–computer interaction, provides features such as gestural interaction, tangible interfaces, pen-based computing, and interface customization—features embraced by an increasingly tech-savvy public. However, multi-touch platforms have not been adopted as “everyday” computer interaction devices that support important text entry intensive applications such as word processing and spreadsheets. In this paper, we present two studies that begin to explore user performance and experience with entering text using a multi-touch input. The first study establishes a benchmark for text entry performance on a multi-touch platform across input modes that compare uppercase-only to mixed-case, single-touch to multi-touch and copy to memorization tasks. The second study includes mouse style interaction for formatting rich text to simulate a word processing task using multi-touch input. As expected, our results show that users do not perform as well in terms of text entry efficiency and speed using a multi-touch interface as with a traditional keyboard. Not as expected was the result that degradation in performance was significantly less for memorization versus copy tasks, and consequently willingness to use multi-touch was substantially higher (50% versus 26%) in the former case. Our results, which include preferred input styles of participants, also provide a baseline for further research to explore techniques for improving text entry performance on multi-touch systems.

An application oriented and shape feature based multi-touch gesture description and recognition method

In order to customize multi-touch gestures for different applications, and facilitate multi-touch gesture recognition, an application oriented and shape feature based multi-touch gesture description and recognition method is proposed. In this method, multi-touch gestures are classified into two categories, namely atomic gesture and combined gesture, where combined gesture is a combination of atomic gestures using temporal, spatial and logical relationships. For description, users' motions are mapped into gestures, and then semantic constraints of an application are extracted to build the accessible relationships between gestures and entity states. For recognition, trajectories of a gesture are projected onto an image, and the shape feature of every trajectory and relationships between each other are extracted to match with gesture templates. Experiments show that this method is independent to multi-touch platforms, robust to manipulating differences of users, and it is scalable and reusable for users and applications.

A multi-touch platform based on four corner cameras and methods for accurately locating contact points

This paper presents a low-cost and scalable multi-touch platform which uses four cameras to reduce occlusion. Three methods are provided for locating contact points on this platform, including the lookup table, vanishing point, and 3D reconstruction. With each of these methods, respectively, the contact point is located using the projection center and the reference point, the projection center and the vanishing point, and the back-projected rays of epipolar geometry. If the four directing lines of a contact point intersect, the contact point is considered to be real; if the lines do not intersect, the point is rejected. Experimental results indicate that all three methods are capable of locating contact points even under conditions of occlusion. The lookup table and vanishing point methods are, respectively, best suited to small and large platforms, while the accuracy of 3D reconstruction method has been found to be sensitive to the physical setup. The approach proposed here can be directly installed on existing display platforms and thus should be of practical applicability in the near future.