LapTouch: Using the Lap for Seated Touch Interaction with HMDs

Abstract

Use of virtual reality while seated is common, but studies on seated interaction beyond the use of controllers or hand gestures have been sparse. This work present LapTouch, which makes use of the lap as a touch interface and includes two user studies to inform the design of direct and indirect touch interaction using the lap with visual feedback that guides the user touch, as well as eye-free interaction in which users are not provided with such visual feedback. The first study suggests that direct interaction can provide effective layouts with 95% accuracy with up to a 4×4 layout and a shorter completion time, while indirect interaction can provide effective layouts with up to a 4×5 layout but a longer completion time. Considering user experience, which revealed that 4-row and 5-column layouts are not preferred, it is recommended to use both direct and indirect interaction with a maximum of a 3×4 layout. According to the second study, increasing the eye-free interaction with support vector machine (SVM) allows for a 2×2 layout with a generalized model and 2×2, 2×3 and 3×2 layouts with personalized models.