THE ERGONOMICS OF MID-AIR GESTURES IN VIRTUAL REALITY - HAND CHARACTERISTICS, GESTURE RECOGNITION FAILURES AND THE FEELING OF IMMERSION

Together with new hardware solutions, such as virtual reality (VR) headsets, the use of innovative interaction modes, such as mid-air gestures, is increasing in various areas of research, industry, and everyday life. As such setups are complex and not as well established as traditional haptic or touch-based interfaces, there is a higher risk of users experiencing errors, failures, or technical malfunctions. As for why gesture recognition rates may not be as high as desired, it is not yet clear why this is the case. We conducted a study in a VR context, using an HTC Vive headset and the Leap Motion gesture recognition device. Participants performed basic tasks with a “blocks” application using a pre-defined set of gestures. Afterwards they were asked to rate their levels on trust, acceptance and subjective feeling of immersion. We also measured basic hand parameters. We examined the correlation between hand size and observed detection errors of the gesture recognition device. Moreover, we analyzed the influence of perceived errors on the subjective feeling of immersion. We found no significant correlation between hand measurements and error rates. However, there is some evidence that hand length has some effect, which means smaller hands seem to slightly increase the errors rate in interactions using the gesture recognition device. Perceived errors had a negative impact on the feeling of immersion.