Literature Review - Whole Body Interaction

Arm fatigue, or gorilla-arm, was the primary reason for the initial failure of mid-air or touchscreen computer interaction systems [1]. Gestural interfacing is now being adopted widely in gaming, medical applications as well as education, but only through careful research and development of such systems to eliminate or significantly reduce fatigue and optimize the interaction. Although the most common mid-air interactions focus on arm and hand gestures, such as the LeapMotion and also a Nintendo Wii remote, several other techniques exist or are in development to bring the whole body of the user into the interface. The concept of gorilla-arm also extends to whole body interactions, and in a sense is much more important. Mobility is an additional aspect of a whole body interaction (WBI) system which is to be addressed. On-body visualizations, EM noise sensing, grounded interfaces, and intra-operative machine interfacing through inertial sensors are all systems currently in their research and development stage, and in-depth studies looking at the development principles of such systems have also been conducted. One such study identifies key design qualities of a WBI system, and another describes EnActor, a blueprint developed specifically for the development of whole body interaction software in a performing arts context.