Gaze Augmented Hand-Based Kinesthetic Interaction: What You See Is What You Feel

Kinesthetic interaction between the user and the computer mainly utilizes the hand-based input with force-feedback devices. There are two major shortcomings in hand-based kinesthetic interaction: physical fatigue associated with continuous hand movements and the limited workspace of current force-feedback devices for accurately exploring a large environment. To address these shortcomings, we developed two interaction techniques that use eye gaze as an additional input modality: HandGazeTouch and GazeTouch. Hand GazeTouch combines eye gaze and hand motion as the input for kinesthetic interaction, i.e., it uses eye gaze to point and hand motion to touch. GazeTouch replaces all hand motions in touch behavior with eye gaze, i.e., it uses eye gaze to point and gaze dwell time to trigger the touch. In both interaction techniques, the user feels the haptic feedback through the force-feedback device. The gaze-based techniques were evaluated in a softness discrimination experiment by comparing them to the traditional kinesthetic interface, HandTouch, which only uses the hand-based input. The results indicate that the HandGazeTouch technique is not only as accurate, natural, and pleasant as the traditional interface but also more efficient.