Wednesday, May 5, 2010

XWand: UI for intelligent spaces

Authors:
Andrew Wilson
Stephen Shafer
Microsoft Research


Summary:

Goal: to build an interaction device which can be used to point and interact with multiple devices around the user. (including voice medium).
- Orientation - combination of magnetometer and accelerometer. Can be affected by the metal in the environment
- Position - uses vision techniques to find the 3D position from 2 - 2D position. Tracks 2 IR LEDs.
An average error of 6' is found in pointing tasks (pointing accuracy of device).

Dynamic bayes network is used to process the events from the wand (gestures / button events) and the speed recognition events. Speech recognition allows multimodal interaction with devices in the user environment and also provides multiple methods to perform one operation. Ignoring speech recognition results based on the pointing context helps improve the speech recognition. "Volume up" is ignored while pointing at the lights.

A user study with 10 male users was performed. Variables - Time taken to complete task, accuracy of pointing and responses to questionnaire. Scenarios - Tracking & No tracking , Audio Feedback & No Audio feedback were tested.
The users did not find the audio feedback very useful while tracking of the wand is enabled.

Discussion:
The wand is familiar to the wand simulated with Wii for Wiizards games and i do not remember another such want pointing device (mounted on mouse). Given the usage scenario, the device is novel.

Comments: franck

2 comments:

  1. It is an interesting device, like a super remote controller.

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  2. It is novel for this purpose. However, I wonder how this could be applied for other uses, and whether the hardware allows it to be widely used (I have no idea about hardware matters)

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