From drewk@graphics.cis.upenn.edu Tue Jun 16 09:21:19 1998 Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id JAA15944 for ; Tue, 16 Jun 1998 09:21:17 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (NfpqH/Xx4DMen35Do1r/dbFrQfRJxxT7@[128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id JAA26580 for ; Tue, 16 Jun 1998 09:21:16 -0400 (EDT) Received: from linc.cis.upenn.edu (LINC.CIS.UPENN.EDU [158.130.12.3]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with ESMTP id GAA19921 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Tue, 16 Jun 1998 06:21:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from graphics.cis.upenn.edu (GRAPHICS.CIS.UPENN.EDU [158.130.2.10]) by linc.cis.upenn.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA28058 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Tue, 16 Jun 1998 09:21:00 -0400 (EDT) Received: from roger.cis.upenn.edu (ROGER.CIS.UPENN.EDU [158.130.12.70]) by graphics.cis.upenn.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA09405 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Tue, 16 Jun 1998 09:20:59 -0400 (EDT) Received: by roger.cis.upenn.edu id NAA09818; Tue, 16 Jun 1998 13:20:59 GMT Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 13:20:59 GMT Posted-Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 13:20:59 GMT Message-Id: <199806161320.NAA09818@roger.cis.upenn.edu> From: Drew Kessler MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu (3D UI List) Subject: Re: input devices In-Reply-To: <199806160038.RAA05735@umbilicus.artsci.washington.edu> References: <61AC5C9A4B9CD11181A200805F57CD5404326B54@red-msg-44.dns.microsoft.com> <199806160038.RAA05735@umbilicus.artsci.washington.edu> X-Mailer: VM 6.22 under 19.15 XEmacs Lucid Status: RO Hello, all! I have really enjoyed reading through the archive of messages to the 3D-UI mailing list, and your many insightful comments. I hope I can add something of value to the discussions. Chris Shaw writes: ... > My favorite device is a Polhemus sensor with 3 buttons attached in a > curve parallel to the X axis. ... > User complaints about my favorite device are that some men feel that > the device is too small. This is good news, because it enlarges the > volume budget, with the potential of making room for more > electronics. Chris, I am immensely curious. Is this missing a :), or do you really see a difference between men and women in their opinion of the input device? ... > The other problem is that the button arrangement sometimes allows for > accidental opposing-force clicks of the button opposing the one > intended. My watch has the same problem. Really annoying in the early hours when I am trying to add 15 mins to the alarm time. The increase in cognitive load does help me wake up, though :) I've done some work with a "top-of-the-line" glove input device (CyberGlove), and I agree with you that gesture input "sucks." It has all of the problems of speech input (noisy input, user differences, new language to learn, ambiguities, fatigue, etc.), but to a larger degree. Whole hand input is not useful at this point both because of the lack of haptic feedback (as you said), and the shortcomings of current technology. I'm not willing to write it completely off, though. The tracker input device you describe can only be represented in a virtual environment by a rigid volume that has 6 degrees of freedom and can cause 7 different events, max. A whole hand input device (w/ tracker on wrist) could be represented by 17 rigid volumes (arm, palm, 3/finger) and 27 DOF (3 bends/finger, abduction between 5 fingers, pitch/yaw of wrist, 6 DOF of tracker). I'm convinced that some bright person will find a use for the extra stuff. One example that springs to mind is the "input" to a trumpet (3 tabs of varying height) which could also control a color selector (obtaining values for red, green, and blue) (never tried it, though). Also, when hardware and software can handle the collision detection and reaction problem between 17 volumes and the objects in the environment, I think that whole hand input will appear much more useful than it does right now (compared to a "3D mouse" that also has no haptic feedback). -Drew -- ___________________________________________________________________________ G. Drew Kessler drewk@central.cis.upenn.edu Dept. of Computer and Information Science Office: 174 Moore Bldg University of Pennsylvania Phone: (215)573-2815 200 South 33rd Street Fax: (215)898-0587 Philadelphia, PA, USA 19104-6389 http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~drewk/home.html