Interaction Techniques for 3D-positioning Objects in Mobile Augmented Reality

Abstract

This paper explores interaction techniques for positioning objects in 3D-space during instantiation and movement interactions in mobile augmented reality. We designed the methods for 3D-objects positioning (no rotation or scaling) based on camera position and orientation, touch interaction, and combinations of these modalities. We consider four interaction techniques for creation: three new techniques and an existing one, and four techniques for moving: two new techniques and another two from previous work. We implemented all interaction methods within a smartphone application and used it as a basis for the experimental evaluation. We evaluated the interaction methods in a comparative user study (N=12): The touch-based methods outperform the camera-based techniques in perceived workload and accuracy. Both are comparable regarding the task completion time. The multimodal methods performed worse than the methods based on individual modalities both in terms of performance and workload. We discuss the implications of these findings to the HCI research and provide corresponding design recommendations. For example, we recommend avoiding the combination of camera and touch-based methods for a simultaneous interaction, as they interfere with each other and introduce jitter and inaccuracies in the user input.