Pointing Blindly

I came across an article that deviated from the realm of augmented reality, yet was closely related.  The article began by providing a brief overview of augmented reality and virtual reality applications:  their premises and their implementations.  The authors of this paper recognized that due to hardware diversification among personal smart phones it is unlikely for the majority of users to have the same technologies at their disposal.  The authors investigated the capabilities of a pointing-based interaction that provides no visual feedback.

The decision to remove visual feedback is based on hardware limitations, but also on the observation that users tend to shift their attention to displays rather than the real-world primarily.  These authors set out to test whether simple pointing-based interaction could yield comparable accuracy in tracking targets.  The results of their research was that pointing-based interaction, based on a minimalist-style hardware configuration of an accelerometer and compass, were unpromising.  The pitch and roll of the device as it was pointed between targets dramatically affected the hardware's ability to retrieve accurate orientation.  Further, their initial hypothesis that maintaining a stationary, target-facing posture, was debunked by results that showed that subjects allowed free motion were able to reach a higher accuracy.

This article is not quite about augmented reality but did have an impact on our project.  Our project solely relies on marker-based tracking and GPS-based tracking.  This article helped to remind me at least that pointing-based interaction is also not only plausible but necessary in our application when it comes to markerless tracking.  The article helped to give an estimation of the best use of pointing-based interaction and its limitations, so that we can avoid proven shortfalls.


Source:
Reaching the same point: Effects on consistency when pointing at objects in the physical environment without feedback

http://www.sciencedirect.com.lib-ezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/science/article/pii/S1071581910001254