multi-touch igesture research

ideas:
multi-touch gesture research largely focuses on

1) hardware implementation or
2) using gestures to control widgets/cursors/graphical apps

they also assume a co-located CSCW context...no work has been done (so far) in using multi-touch for communication /telematics. This is because almost all of the research uses the diamondtouch system from MERL.

since the first multitouch commercial technology is being implemented on a cell phone (apple i-phone); and since a cell phone main purpose is to 'connect' and 'communicate' with other people, i wonder if it's possible to investigate how multi-touch input can create new interfaces that connects and communicates with other people......? almost all the work in multi-touch and gesture is for large table-top CSCW with graphic applications/cursors/manipulating objects.

one exciting and overlooked possibility is looking at multi-touch for connecting and communicating...

links
DiamondTouch by MERL is a multi-touch and multi-use tablet. their research includes creating bimanual and multi-touch gesture inputs. Primarily focus is on co-located CSCW applications. Their website contains publications and research videos... i've seen/experienced the diamondtouch at siggraph '06

tomer moscovich's research and website contains research papers, video's, and his phd dissertation on 'principles and applicatons of multi-touch interaction'. a central focus of his work is using multi-touch surfaces to support creative tasks (animation and graphics).

overview + history of multi-touch on buxton's site...

lit review:

1. Moscovich, T. and Hughes, J. F. 2006. Multi-finger cursor techniques. In Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Graphics interface (Quebec, Canada, June 07 - 09, 2006). ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, vol. 137. Canadian Information Processing Society, Toronto, Ont., Canada, 1-7.
   
   this paper outlines several new cursor techniques using multiple fingers; so instead of having one cursor icon for the hand, there are up to 5 per hand. they used fingerworks touchstream product for their research.
   
   
2. T. Moscovich. "Multi-touch Interaction." In Extended Abstracts of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2006). Montréal, Canada, April 2006. (Doctoral Consortium Participant.)
   
   general overview of multi-touch principles & possibilities with emphasis on his research into supporting creative tasks: animation and graphics...presented at chi '06 doctoral consortium.
   
   
3. Mike Wu, Mike & Balakrishnan, Ravin (2003). Multi-Finger and Whole Hand Gestural Interaction Techniques for Multi-User Tabletop Displays. CHI Letters
   
   using the diamondtouch as the input device, this paper presents one finger...two finger...one hand...two hand, gesture-sets. the mappings of the gestures are either descendants of previous work (pinching from krueger) or newly developed mappings (corner shape hands)...typical examples are to use two fingers to rotate an object by using one as the pivot point.
   
   examples support co-located CSCW applications, and the gestures are used to manipulate objects (very graphics oriented). again, no mention or use of multi-touch gestures for communication or telematics.
   
   
4. Mike Wu, Chia Shen, Kathy Ryall, Clifton Forlines, and Ravin Balakrishnan. (2006). Gesture Registration, Relaxation, and Reuse for Multi-Point Direct-Touch Surfaces, in Proceedings of IEEE Tabletop 2006 Conference on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems, Adelaide, South Australia. 183-190. Video (MOV, 54Mb)
   
   This paper presents a set of design principles for creating multi-touch gestures that are easily understood by the users. The design principles are based on direct-touch surfaces, and is well suited for CSCW work. They contribute three concepts: gesture registration, relaxation, and reuse. (Gesture reuse is intriguing because they hint at the fact that different gestures have different meanings in different contexts).
   
   
5. Tim Chen and Sidney S. Fels and Tecla Schiphorst. FlowField: Investigating the Semantics of Caress. presentation at ACM Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interaction (SIGGRAPH'02). Pages 185. July. 2002. Videos [1] and [2]
   
   Paper outlining an interactive art piece where participants caress the surface of the MTC-tactex to disrupt a particle flow in an immersive CAVE environment...emphasis is on exploring the semantics of gesture (caressing water metaphor) and the qualitative properties of touch, and because of the signal of the tactex; the shape of touch.
   
   
6. Timothy Chen and Sidney S. Fels and Sarah Saehee Min. FlowField and Beyond: Applying Pressure-sensitive Multi-point Touchpad Interaction. Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME2003). Pages 49-52. July. 2003.
   
   Technical paper for the FlowField art piece..tactex pad has a 72 taxel resolution, which is lo-res...the authors explain how they used interpolation image processing algorithms to improve the signal data to meet adequate standards.
   
   
7. Min, Sarah. Caressing Sound and Image.
   Paper giving in-depth explanation and results of the interpolation algorithms to improve the signal data from the MTC tactex pad.
   
   
8. Schiphorst, T., Lovell, R., and Jaffe, N. 2002. Using a gestural interface toolkit for tactile input to a dynamic virtual space. In CHI '02 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, April 20 - 25, 2002). CHI '02. ACM Press, New York, NY, 754-755.
   
   Presents the G.I.T; the aim is to develop a library of gestures based on the semantics of touch and its qualitative attributes. Uses the MTC as the platform and Laban Shape as a gesture/touch taxonomy. The MTC gives blobs of someone caressing the pad...these shapes are then analyzed based on Laban effort-shape definitions of Time (quick-sustained), Space (direct-indirect), Weight (light-strong) and Flow (free-bound).