This paper presents a passive, simple, and affordable electric field based ranging method for capturing human position, leaning, and hand or leg movements. A test system transforms the physical input into a two-dimensional position in an indoor environment. The method and the designed test system can be used, for example, in gaming, virtual exhibition, and virtual reality applications. The proposed system measures the capacitances between a user, standing on a transmitting floor electrode, and four vertically aligned receiver wires placed at the corners of the tracking area. The system converts the measured capacitances to absolute distances, which in turn can be used to resolve the unambiguous position of the user. The design was verified in a 1.8 x 1.8 m-sized test space by using the structures of a virtual reality cave. The test system can track a human body with relative accuracy of less than 10.4 cm at an update rate of 19.5 Hz.
As user interfaces are becoming more ubiquitous and abundant, users may feel perplexed by the pure number of user interfaces surrounding them. In order to increase user acceptance, ubiquitous user interfaces should be designed to be as calm and nonintrusive as possible. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a calm user interface prototype, Living Wood. Living Wood is a touch sensitive graphical user interface for smart home applications, and designed to fade into the background and hide itself when it is not used. A prototype for lighting control was built and installed in a smart home laboratory. To investigate how the self-hiding nature of the panel, its aesthetic features and usability was experienced by users, we tested Living Wood with 11 users.
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