Effect of Control-Display Transfer Function on Pointing Performance for a Hand/Finger Based Touchless Gestural Controls: a Preliminary Investigation

Recent technologies now allow touchless gestural controls to be integrated as computing input devices. Unlike traditional input devices, the effect of design parameters (such as control-display transfer functions for physical to onscreen movements) for touchless controls is largely unknown. This paper presents an experiment where a hand- and finger-based touchless gestural control system replaced typical pointing and clicking functions of a mouse. The effect of different pointer-acceleration-based control-display transfer functions (dynamic CD gain with different scaling factors) on performance for a standard, 2-dimensional Fitts’ task was evaluated for 15 participants. Additionally, the influence of armrest support positioning was investigated. Results showed significantly increased error rates for the high level of control-display gain (SF=1000) in the gestural controls. Neither CD gain nor armrest position had significant effect on effective throughput or movement times, though lower CD gain showed the best performance and lowest error rates. Overall performance for the touchless gestural system was less than that of a traditional mouse, though comparable to previous gestural or remote pointing systems