Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble Équipe Ingénierie de l'Interaction Humain-Machine

Équipe Ingénierie de l'Interaction
Humain-Machine

Handheld Augmented Reality Interaction: Spatial Relations

197 pages. 2014.

Thomas Vincent

Abstract

We explored interaction within the context of handheld Augmented Reality (AR), where a handheld
device is used as a physical magic lens to ’augment’ the physical surrounding. We focused, in
particular, on the role of spatial relations between the on-screen content and the physical surrounding.
On the one hand, spatial relations define opportunities for mixing environments, such as the
adaptation of the digital augmentation to the user’s location. On the other hand, spatial relations
involve specific constraints for interaction such as the impact of hand tremor on on-screen camera
image stability. The question is then, how can we relax spatial constraints while maintaining the
feeling of digital-physical collocation. Our contribution is three-fold.
• First, we propose a design space for handheld AR on-screen content with a particular focus
on the spatial relations between the different identified frames of reference. This design space
defines a framework for systematically studying interaction with handheld AR applications.
• Second, we propose and evaluate different handheld AR pointing techniques to improve pointing
precision. Indeed, with handheld AR set-up, both touch-screen input and the spatial
relations between the on-screen content and the physical surrounding impair the precision of
pointing.
• Third, as part of a collaborative research project involving AIST-Tsukuba and Schneider-
France and Japan, we developed a toolkit supporting the development of handheld AR applications.
The toolkit has been used to develop several demonstrators.