The release of Nintendo Wii in 2006 promotes the use of haptic force gestures to become a very popular way for people to interact with interactive entertainment. Powered by batteries, a Wii-Mote (Nintendo Wii remote control) can be used to interact with ubiquitous computer devices in the environment through (wireless) bluetooth connection. One of the main benefits of Wii-Mote is its ability to capture gesture "in the air", which means users are not constrained to any physical space such as a touch screen or touch pad. If we imagine users will bring their Wii-Mote everywhere they go, we should investigate many unexplored opportunities for a fully interactive surrounding, whereby Wii-Mote becomes the extension of users' expression to interact with the world.
Our recent study produces a driver to connect Wii-Mote to computer devices (http://wiiforpc.com), which has been extended with a novel and intuitive gesture recognition technique to give developers a greater control over simple and continuous gestural movements. The driver also captures and detects various gestures and interpret them as an expression, such as writing a "letter A" in the air.
In this workshop I would like to explore and exchange ideas on the use of Gesture "in the air" to give users a full freedom to express their interaction with the environment. Some potential applications are: interactive museum, painting with dancing, and writing in the air.
Speaker profile: Dr. Dian Tjondronegoro (http://www.fit.qut.edu.au/~tjondron) is a Senior Lecturer at QUT, teaching and researching in the area of mobile interaction design, multimedia database and applications, and multi-channel content delivery.
Authors: Dian Tjondronegoro, Zachary Fitz-Walter, Samuel Jones
Event: SF08: Embodied Interaction in Mobile, Physical and Virtual Environments Workshop