Communications of the ACM
Cockpit For Apps: Minority Report Meets Google Glass
University of Manitoba researchers believe a "personal cockpit" would provide a good way for people to interact with their apps.
Credit: University of Manitoba
A "personal cockpit" would provide a good way for people to interact with their apps in the near future, according to Barrett Ens and colleagues at the University of Manitoba. The researchers say the technology could enable people to immerse themselves in a three-dimensional (3D) sea of virtual screens and control their digital lives, similar to the way a pilot controls a plane. They would be able to pull what they need into view when they need it and move it to the 3D virtual space behind them, as well as push it aside into their peripheral vision or even pin it out of reach on a wall.
The team tested the idea as it would appear to someone wearing 3D head-tracking gesture-controlled glasses, and users did not find it to be distracting. Participants could clear the front view, like a cockpit window, and pull task screens in and out of their line of sight as they saw fit. "Each display is set just within reach, half a meter away, which we found to be the ideal distance to balance both viewing and touch," Ens says.
The findings will be presented at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Toronto in April.
From New Scientist
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