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Vision-based multiple user interaction with in-home large displays

University of British Columbia

In-home large displays such as TVs are becoming larger in size, and more interactive in function. They start to be simultaneously used by multiple people for various tasks in a dynamic setting. User interface issues such as multiple users sharing the screen resources of the displays, and the usage of multiple control devices have begun to emerge. We assume horizontally laid out “personal interaction spaces” as the user interface for multiple users to manage their screen real-estate. In this case, users often need to sign in and out as well as have their personal spaces placed on the screen. Also, the limited number and complex usage of conventional remote controllers for TVs cannot satisfy the need of multiple interacting users. In this thesis, we consider a computer vision based system as a solution to the emerging user interface issues. We built a vision system that tracks the identities, positions and hand positions of people in front of a large display to support our user studies of screen real-estate management and multi-device management. We explore the usefulness of a vision system through two user studies. We designed the first study to compare the use of tracker-based mechanism versus manual ones for managing the display. Study Results suggest that the tracking system is especially useful for simplifying the user sign in/out process in conjunction with a manual method, and effective user-centric placement of people’s interaction spaces. As well, we designed a second study to explore whether contexts exist for lower fidelity, gesture-based “remote controllers” for manipulating on-screen objects. Study results show that gestural interfaces combined with high fidelity devices such as a mobile phone in a group gaming scenario can be useful for centralizing the control in the team and reducing errors. However, gestural control is only suitable for simple, once-in-awhile interaction.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-03-04

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/5533

Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/