Using Magnets for Gesture-Based Mobile Interaction: Mapping Magnetic Data to 3D Coordinates

LOCATION: Auditorium 1, TEL, Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, 20th floor

Date/Time: 25.10.2013, 12:00-13:00

SPEAKER: Serafima Gurevich

ABSTRACT:

The technological progress in miniaturization provides the basis for increasingly small computerized devices with ever greater computing capabilities. To make the provided functionality accessible and usable poses a tremendous challenge to interface designers.
This talk introduces a novel technique that maps movements of a handheld magnet around a mobile device to 3D coordinates. Those can be used to realize touchless gesture-based interaction and therefore enable an additional and natural input modality. The interface employs the data provided by the magnetometer and accelerometer commonly built into mobile devices.
While the mapping principle can be applied to different platforms, an Android library was developed as a prototype. Additionally, several applications demonstrate potential use cases: Visual feedback similar to a computer mouse pointer, gesture-based, occlusion-free and multimodal interaction around the device as well as simultaneous interaction with two applications.

HOST: Hamed Ketabdar