Mid-Air Gesture Control of Multiple Home Devices in Spatial Augmented Reality Prototype

Touchless, mid-air gesture-based interactions with remote devices have been investigated as alternative or complementary to interactions based on remote controls and smartphones. Related studies focus on user elicitation of a gesture vocabulary for one or a few home devices and explore recommendations of respective gesture vocabularies without validating them by empirical testing with interactive prototypes. We have developed an interactive prototype based on spatial Augmented Reality (AR) of seven home devices. Each device responds to touchless gestures (identified from a previous elicitation study) via the MS Kinect sensor. Nineteen users participated in a two-phase test (with and without help provided by a virtual assistant) according to a scenario that required from each user to apply 41 gestural commands (19 unique). We report on main usability indicators: task success, task time, errors (false negative/positives), memorability, perceived usability, and user experience. The main conclusion is that mid-air interaction with multiple home devices is feasible, fairly easy to learn and apply, and enjoyable. The contributions of this paper are (a) validation of a previously elicited gesture set; (b) development of a spatial AR prototype for testing of mid-air gestures, and (c) extensive assessment of gestures and evidence in favor of mid-air interaction in smart environments.