Abstract
This chapter presents an intelligent interface system, including a new gesture-based wearable input device called iThrow as a main user interface for mobile devices, and an infrastructure helping users be aware of and make use of various electronic devices in user-friendly manners. In this kind of intelligent interface system, selecting an object among multiple ones is one of the fundamental functions because it is a precursor to all other subsequent actions. We propose a new selection algorithm that improves selection speed by adaptively resizing the objects’ angular widths. Results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the ray-based selection technique in selection speed by about 62.6%.
TopIthrow System
The iThrow system is a gesture-based intelligent interface system that provides mobile users with a user-friendly way of interacting with a ubiquitous computing environment. We assume in this context that each person uses UFC as a main user computing device in our system.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ray-Based Minimum Angle Selection Technique: A conventional selection technique that uses a ray casted from a user toward a pointing direction and then selects a device that is the closest to the ray as the target. The “closest” here means that the included angle between the casted ray and a device is minimal.
Magnetic (Magneto-Resistive) Sensor: A sensor for measuring the angle between the direction of electric current and magnetization, usually used in electronic compasses.
Target Selection: A process of finding a device that is pointed to by a user.
Accelerometer: A sensor for measuring the acceleration of an object and usually used for motion detection.
Location Server: A server that gathers and manages the location information of all objects in a ubiquitous computing environment.
iThrow: A ring-type wearable input device that recognizes a user’s gestures and pointing directions with a three-axes accelerometer and a three-axes magnetic sensor.
Group Angle: A set of contiguously arranged angular widths.