PhD Seminar • Human-Computer Interaction • Conductor: Intersection-Based Bimanual Pointing in AR and VR

Please note: This PhD seminar will take place in DC 1304 and online.

Futian (Caesar) Zhang, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

Supervisors: Professors Jian Zhao, Keiko Katsuragawa

Pointing is an elementary interaction in virtual and augmented reality environments, and, to effectively support selection, techniques must deal with the challenges of occlusion and depth specification. Most of the previous techniques require two explicit steps to handle occlusion.

In this paper, we propose Conductor, an intuitive, plane-ray, intersection-based, 3D pointing technique where users leverage bimanual input to control a ray and intersecting plane. Conductor allows users to use the non-dominant hand to adjust the cursor distance on the ray while pointing with the dominant hand. We evaluate Conductor against Raycursor, a state-of-the-art VR pointing technique, and show that Conductor outperforms Raycursor for selection tasks. Given our results, we argue that bimanual selection techniques merit additional exploration to support object selection and placement within virtual environments.

To join this PhD seminar on Zoom, please go to https://uwaterloo.zoom.us/j/93286410791. You can also attend in person in DC 1304.