That one there! Pointing to establish device identity

Comments

Franck

Manoj

Summary

The authors sought to identify devices using a pointing gesture involving custom tags and stylus called the gesturePen. They chose a two-way line-of-sight communications link to interact with devices in a dense computing environment. The pen had a irDA compliant infrared transceiver and developed tags that can be fixed to active and passive devices. The communication flow between the pen, a tag, and the associated device is:

• the user points the pen towards a tag and presses a button on the pen
• the tag receives the ping message, blinks the light, and sends its identity information to the pen.
• it receives the ID, validates it, and sends it to the attached device.
• Information is transferred over the network to the other device.

They tested their device with some user studies. First was a cognitive load task, where the users would play a jigsaw puzzle on an handheld computer using the gesturePen as a normal stylus. Then the participant would be interrupted to choose a tag by reading the IP address lab and choosing it from the list, or pointing towards the tag with the pen and clicking a button. The next study was a mobile environment task, where the participant was required to select the target device. Their method choices were the same as for the first test. For the most part, the gesturePen, was well suited to the dynamic ubiquitous computing environments. The users learned the system quickly and became comfortable using it fast.

Analysis

It seems like an innovative way of selecting a device. I'm surprised it is not that common now. The only problem I see is the limited range and maybe confusion if there are two devices close by. Anyways, it seems like you would need to be close for this device to be accurate.