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Accelerometer-based gesture control for a design environment

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Abstract

Accelerometer-based gesture control is studied as a supplementary or an alternative interaction modality. Gesture commands freely trainable by the user can be used for controlling external devices with handheld wireless sensor unit. Two user studies are presented. The first study concerns finding gestures for controlling a design environment (Smart Design Studio), TV, VCR, and lighting. The results indicate that different people usually prefer different gestures for the same task, and hence it should be possible to personalise them. The second user study concerns evaluating the usefulness of the gesture modality compared to other interaction modalities for controlling a design environment. The other modalities were speech, RFID-based physical tangible objects, laser-tracked pen, and PDA stylus. The results suggest that gestures are a natural modality for certain tasks, and can augment other modalities. Gesture commands were found to be natural, especially for commands with spatial association in design environment control.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge research funding from the National Technology Agency of Finland (Tekes) and the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). We would also like to thank our partners in the ITEA Ambience project.

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Correspondence to Juha Kela.

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Kela, J., Korpipää, P., Mäntyjärvi, J. et al. Accelerometer-based gesture control for a design environment. Pers Ubiquit Comput 10, 285–299 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-005-0033-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-005-0033-8

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