Paper Reading #11: Multitoe: High-Precision Interaction with Back-Projected Floors Based on High-Resolution Multi-Touch Input

Reference Information

Multitoe: High-Precision Interaction with Back-Projected Floors Based on High-Resolution Multi-Touch Input

Thomas Augsten, Konstantin Kaefer, Rene Meusel, Caroline Fetzer, Dorian Kanitz, Thomas Stoff, Torsten Becker, Christian Holz, Patrick Baudisch

Presented at UIST'10, October 3-6, 2010, New York, New York, USA

Author Bios

• Thomas Augsten is a Master's student in IT Systems Engineering at the Hasso Plattner Institute of the University of Potsdam. This is his second paper and first presented at UIST.
• Konstantin Kaefer is a Master's student in IT Systems Engineering at the Hasso Plattner Institute of the University of Potsdam and also works on mapping software for Development Seed. He is the co-author of a book on Drupal.
• Rene Meusel, Caroline Fetzer, Dorian Kanitz, Thomas Stoff, and Torsten Becker are all students at the Hasso Plattner Institute.
• Patrick Baudisch is a professor of Computer Science at the Hasso Plattner Institute of the University of Potsdam. He worked at PARC and Microsoft Research.

Summary

Hypothesis

Current touchscreen interfaces and devices are limited in size and, therefore, in content.  The authors believe that a solution lies in creating an interface with a larger surface area and using feet as the interaction agents.

Methods

The study of how to not activate a button had participants walk over four buttons, two of which were to be activated, and two that were not. The authors observed strategies used and conducted personal interviews. The buttons were labelled pieces of paper. The user strategies were categorized.

A second study determined which area of the soles users expected to be detected. Users stepped onto the multi-touch floor, which produced a honeycomb grid reflecting where contact with the foot was detected based on user perception.

The third study tried to determine if users have a consistent expected hotspot for foot contact. Users placed their hotspot over the system's generated cross-hair and confirmed their selection. The first contact was with whatever portion of the foot they desired, though the rest used specific portions.

Another study determined precision by asking users to use three differently-sized projected keyboards. Tracking inaccuracy was mitigated, as this test revolved around user capability. The users typed a sentence and were timed.

Results

1^st study

From the Methods conducted the authors saw that there was a wide choice of actions and techniques used by the participants. Some of the successful techniques used included stomping, jumping, double tapping. It was also seem that jumping was most successful when attempting to invoke the menu.

2^nd study

it was found that most users were inclined to think that the entirety of the shoe sole should be used when selecting. The responses regarding the outer lining of the shoe usage was varied however.

3^rd study

the authors found that the user perception of where the hotspot would be was widely varied for the free choice style

4^th study

The author saw that there was a inverse relationship between size of button and rate of error

Contents

In order to propose an effective design of an interactive floor surface, a prototype was built by the researchers. They decided to use a combination of Front Diffuse Illumination (Front DI), gives position of feet by analyzing shadows, and Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR), makes pressure visible, to interpret user input. The floor was made of several tiles that consisted of many different materials and Rosco projection screens to display images. To keep costs down, the researchers decided to only build one tile that could sense user input.

Discussion

I thought this was a cool implementation of a Microsoft Surface on the floor. however I doubt it's practicality and whether or not it would be used.