Accuracy of interpreting pointing gestures in egocentric view

Published in Ubicomp2016
Abstract: Communicating spatial information by pointing is ubiquitous in human interactions. With the growing use of head-mounted cameras for collaborative purposes, it is important to assess how accurately viewers of the resulting egocentric videos can interpret pointing acts. We conducted an experiment to compare the accuracy of interpreting four different pointing techniques: hand pointing, head pointing, gaze pointing and hand+gaze pointing. Our results suggest that superimposing the gaze information on the egocentric video can enable viewers to determine pointing targets more accurately and more confidently. Hand pointing performed best when the pointing target was straight ahead and head pointing was the least preferred in terms of ease of interpretation. Our results can inform the design of collaborative applications that make use of the egocentric view.