HulaMove: Using Commodity IMU for Waist Interaction

We present HulaMove, a novel interaction technique that leverages the movement of the waist as a new eyes-free and hands-free input method for both the physical world and the virtual world. We first conducted a user study (N=12) to understand users’ ability to control their waist. We found that users could easily discriminate eight shifting directions and two rotating orientations, and quickly confirm actions by returning to the original position (quick return). We developed a design space with eight gestures for waist interaction based on the results and implemented an IMU-based real-time system. Using a hierarchical machine learning model, our system could recognize waist gestures at an accuracy of 97.5%. Finally, we conducted a second user study (N=12) for usability testing in both real-world scenarios and virtual reality settings. Our usability study indicated that HulaMove significantly reduced interaction time by 41.8% compared to a touch screen method, and greatly improved users’ sense of presence in the virtual world. This novel technique provides an additional input method when users’ eyes or hands are busy, accelerates users’ daily operations, and augments their immersive experience in the virtual world.

@inproceedings{xuhai2021, author = {Xu, Xuhai and Li, Jiahao and Yuan, Tianyi and He, Liang and Liu, Xin and Yan, Yukang and Wang, Yuntao and Shi, Yuanchun and Mankoff, Jennifer and Dey, Anind K}, title = {HulaMove: Using Commodity IMU for Waist Interaction}, year = {2021}, isbn = {9781450380966}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445182}, doi = {10.1145/3411764.3445182}, abstract = {}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems}, articleno = {503}, numpages = {16}, keywords = {on-device sensing, Waist interaction}, location = {Yokohama, Japan}, series = {CHI '21} }