Translation and rotation of virtual objects in Augmented Reality: A comparison of interaction devices

This paper describes an evaluation, which compares three interfaces for translating and rotating virtual objects in an Augmented Reality environment. We used a mouse/keyboard based interface, an infrared-tracking based gesture recognition system, and our tangible user interface, which we developed for this evaluation. Our tangible user interface consists of two accelerometers, one gyroscope, and four buttons integrated in a cuboid casing. The evaluation focused on a comparison of immersion, intuitiveness, mental and physical workload, and task execution times. The test persons had to solve a given task with all interfaces (translating an object, rotating an object, and a combination of translation and rotation). The results showed that a translation of a virtual object takes nearly the same amount of time with all interfaces, but much more than a similar manipulation in a real environment. Rotation is performed as the slowest using a mouse/keyboard based interface. For a combination of translation and rotation, gesture recognition based interaction turned out to be the fastest way of interaction. All kinds of manipulation showed, that gesture recognition provides the most immersive and intuitive interaction with the lowest mental workload. But these benefits are limited by the highest rating of physical workload, caused by additional hardware mounted at the user´s hand, as well as the fact, that the user has to hold his arm upwards during the task execution.