Evaluation of 12-DOF Input Devices for Navigation and Manipulation in Virtual Environments

Abstract

Navigation and manipulation in virtual environments may require up to six degrees of freedom each. Input devices with twelve or more degrees of freedom can avoid explicit changes between navigation and manipulation and may therefore perform well in certain situations. However, usability of already existing 12-DOF devices is still unclear. For evaluating such handheld devices, we developed an extended docking task based on docking tasks designed for examining the usability of 6-DOF devices. In addition to the usually investigated object manipulation, the task requires navigation. We compared docking performances of two 12-DOF devices, the CubicMouse and the YoYo. Additionally, performance with a newly developed 12-DOF input device, the SquareBone, was under study. The SquareBone, a variation of the YoYo idea combined with some potentially beneficial features of the CubicMouse, provides 2 * 6 elastic DOF which can be controlled simultaneously. The study revealed that the isotonic CubicMouse, although preferred by novice users, was outperformed by the elastic SquareBone and the YoYo. The new SquareBone was shown to bear the potential of becoming superior to the YoYo, possibly because it enables simultaneous control of the 2*6 DOF.

Insights from Dividing 3D Goal-Directed Movements into Meaningful Phases

“…Most common tasks employed in 3D-interaction research deal with navigation and manipulation. Too many of these tasks, however, are tailored to the devices and techniques under development and certainly aren't standardized yet, [3][4][5] so comparing devices remains difficult. Another problem we experienced is that existing 3D tasks don't necessarily induce goal-directed movements, so interpreting them can be difficult.…”

“…[3][4][5]7 Such overall measures can reveal differences in performance between input devices and interaction techniques but don't provide much insight into the factors responsible for these differences. To draw more meaningful conclusions from interaction movements, we must look at these movements in more detail.…”

Insight into 3D goal-directed movements through a division into meaningful movement phases

“…However, the results also indicated that the effect of practice was larger in the ballistic phase than in the correction phase (F-value=20.39 vs F-value=6.88). It also showed that the larger the target distance the longer the duration of the ballistic phase, F(2,10)=35.57, p<.01, and the correction phase, F (2,10) =28.72, p<.01. The duration of both phases did not show an interaction effect between practice and target distance.…”

“…Most common tasks employed in 3D interaction research are related to navigation and manipulation. Too many of these tasks are, however, tailored to the devices and techniques under development and certainly not standardized yet [12,2,9]. This creates a situation where comparison between devices remains very difficult.…”

The GlobeFish and the GlobeMouse

“…Our study uses an established task, which relates our results to previous work. Only recently an extended docking task involving a combination of spatial navigation and object manipulation was introduced [8]. Such a task is closer to a real-world scenario and it could be used for a follow up study.…”