ABaToGI: an Avatar-based Touchless Gestural Interface

In the last decade, many authors have investigated and studied touchless and gestural interactions as a novel tool for interacting with computers. Moreover, technological innovations have allowed for installations of interactive displays in private and public places. However, interactivity is usually implemented by touchscreens, whereas technologies able to recognise body gestures are more rarely adopted, especially in integration with commercial public displays. Nowadays, the opportunity to investigate touchless interfaces for such systems has become concrete and studied by many researchers. Indeed, this interaction modality offers the possibility to overcome several issues that cannot be solved by touch-based solutions, e.g. keeping a high hygiene level of the screen surface, as well as providing big displays with interactive capabilities.

The main goal of this project is to design and implement a touchless gestural interface for public displays. This implies the need for overcoming several typical issues of both public displays (e.g. interaction blindness, immediate usability) and touchless interfaces (e.g. communicating touchless interactivity). To this end, a novel Avatar-based Touchless Gestural Interface has been developed and deployed in a display, installed in a University campus and publicly accessible to students, lecturers and staff members.

Thanks to several user studies conducted by the USI group, this project allowed to study how the presence of the Avatar may affect user interactions in terms of perceived cognitive workload, if it may be able to foster bimanual interactions, as well as how the presence of audience may affect users’ behaviors.

Publications

• V. Gentile, M. Khamis, S. Sorce, and F. Alt, “They are looking at me! Understanding how Audience Presence Impacts on Public Display Users,” in Proceedings of The 6th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays, 2017.
  [Bibtex]

  @inproceedings{Gentile2017PerDis2,
  author = {Vito Gentile and Mohamed Khamis and Salvatore Sorce and Florian Alt},
  title = {{They are looking at me! Understanding how Audience Presence Impacts on Public Display Users}},
  booktitle = {{Proceedings of The 6th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays}},
  series = {PerDis '17},
  year = {2017},
  location = {{Lugano, Switzerland}},
  publisher = {ACM},
  doi = {10.1145/3078810.3078822},
  articleno = {11},
  numpages = {7},
  keywords = {audience behavior, interactive displays, public displays}
  }

• V. Gentile, S. Sorce, A. Malizia, F. Milazzo, and A. Gentile, “Investigating how User Avatar in Touchless Interfaces Affects Perceived Cognitive Load and Two-Handed Interactions,” in Proceedings of The 6th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays, 2017.
  [Bibtex]

  @inproceedings{Gentile2017PerDis1,
  author = {Vito Gentile and Salvatore Sorce and Alessio Malizia and Fabrizio Milazzo and Antonio Gentile},
  title = {{Investigating how User Avatar in Touchless Interfaces Affects Perceived Cognitive Load and Two-Handed Interactions}},
  booktitle = {{Proceedings of The 6th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays}},
  series = {PerDis '17},
  year = {2017},
  location = {{Lugano, Switzerland}},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  doi = {10.1145/3078810.3078831},
  articleno = {21},
  numpages = {7},
  keywords = {interface evaluation, public displays, touchless gestural interfaces}
  }

• V. Gentile, “Designing Touchless Gestural Interfaces for Public Displays,” PhD Thesis, 2017.
  [Bibtex]

  @phdthesis{Gentile2017PhDThesis,
  author = {Vito Gentile},
  title = {{Designing Touchless Gestural Interfaces for Public Displays}},
  school = {{Università degli Studi di Palermo}},
  year = 2017,
  month = 2
  }

• S. Sorce, V. Gentile, C. Enea, A. Gentile, A. Malizia, and F. Milazzo, “A Touchless Gestural System for Extended Information Access Within a Campus,” in Proceedings of SIGUCCS ’17, Seattle, WA, USA, October 1–4, 2017, New York, NY, USA, 2017.
  [Bibtex]

  @inproceedings{Sorce2017SIGUCCS,
  author = {Salvatore Sorce and Vito Gentile and Cristina Enea and Antonio Gentile and Alessio Malizia and Fabrizio Milazzo},
  title = {{A Touchless Gestural System for Extended Information Access Within a Campus}},
  booktitle = {{Proceedings of SIGUCCS ’17, Seattle, WA, USA, October 1–4, 2017}},
  series = {{SIGUCCS '17}},
  year = 2017,
  isbn = {},
  location = {Seattle, WA},
  pages = {},
  numpages = {7},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3123458.3123459},
  doi = {10.1145/3123458.3123459},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  keywords = {Touchless Interaction, Gestural Interaction, Natural Interfaces, Human-Computer Interaction, Information-provision Systems},
  }

• V. Gentile, S. Sorce, A. Malizia, D. Pirrello, and A. Gentile, “Touchless Interfaces For Public Displays: Can We Deliver Interface Designers From Introducing Artificial Push Button Gestures?,” in Proceedings of the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, New York, NY, USA, 2016, pp. 40-43.
  [Bibtex]

  @inproceedings{Gentile2016AVI,
  author = {Vito Gentile and Salvatore Sorce and Alessio Malizia and Dario Pirrello and Antonio Gentile},
  title = {{Touchless Interfaces For Public Displays: Can We Deliver Interface Designers From Introducing Artificial Push Button Gestures?}},
  booktitle = {{Proceedings of the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces}},
  series = {{AVI '16}},
  year = 2016,
  isbn = {978-1-4503-4131-8},
  location = {{Bari, Italy}},
  pages = {40--43},
  numpages = {4},
  url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2909132.2909282},
  doi = {10.1145/2909132.2909282},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  keywords = {Touchless interfaces, gestural input, public displays, user interface design},
  }