Consumer electronics like television and computer monitors already explored modalities like remote controller, mouse, keyboard, and touch. The touch interface has been used widely because of its ease of accessibility but it is challenging to use touch modality to operate at a distance. Virtual touch technology helps in achieving touch operation at a distance away from the display. I explored different modalities for operating a Graphical User Interface (GUI) through virtual touch. I proposed two new interaction devices using a laser pointer with hardware switch as well as laser pointer with eye gaze switch which do not require drivers to physically touch a display. I compared their performances with a touchscreen in automotive environment by measuring the pointing and selection time for a secondary task, deviation from the lane, average speed, variation in steering angle, cognitive load, and system usability. Results found that the laser tracker system with eye gaze switch did not significantly degrade driving or pointing performance compared to the touchscreen in standard ISO 26022 lane changing task.

Working of Laser Point Tracker:

The idea involves the user holding a LASER wand and pointing it at the display screen to indicate the position of the object on the screen to be selected. When a button is pressed on the wand, a camera placed in front of the computer screen captures the image. The image is then processed to extract the location of the laser spot on the screen in terms of pixel coordinates. The mouse pointer is moved to the coordinates and performed a left mouse button click event. This entire process will give an impression as if the user was touching the screen at a distance without physically touching it. The construction of Laser tracker wand as well as wearable laser tracker is illustrated in the figures below.

Summary:

• Selection time and TLX scores of Laser Tracker system did not significantly deviate from that of touch system

• It does not require user to physically touch the display to select targets

• Laser tracker can be proposed as an alternative to the existing input modalities to perform secondary task while driving

• By working on algorithm and hardware design of the Laser tracker system, the modality has further scope of research in automotive environments.

• Limitation: Sensors placement inside car, vibration

Publications:

• Prabhakar, G., Rajkhowa, P., Harsha, D. and Biswas, P. A wearable virtual touch system for IVIS in cars. Journal of Multimodal User Interface, Springer, 2021, ISSN 1783-8738. DOI: 10.1007/s12193-021-00377-9

• Prabhakar, G., Rajesh, J., & Biswas, P. (2016, December). Comparison of three hand movement tracking sensors as cursor controllers. In 2016 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT), (pp. 358-364). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/ICCICCT.2016.7987974

• Prabhakar, G., & Biswas, P. (2017, July). Evaluation of laser pointer as a pointing device in automotive. In International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Instrumentation and Control Technologies (ICICICT), 2017 (pp. 364-371). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/ICICICT1.2017.8342591

• Biswas, P., Roy, S., Prabhakar, G., Rajesh, J., Arjun, S., Arora, M., & Chakrabarti, A. (2017, July). Interactive sensor visualization for smart manufacturing system. In Proceedings of the 31st British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Conference (p. 99). DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.99

Patent:

• Prabhakar, G., and Biswas, P. Wearable Laser Pointer for Automotive User Interface, Application No.: 201741035044, PCT International Application No. PCT/IB2018/057680