General
SoundxVision is a journey, where I have been working on effortless input solutions in Extended Reality (XR). The first chapter of this journey is an input device to be worn on a user’s thumb which uses thumb movements as input data for controlling in XR, such device can operate independently without being tracked and is less likely to cause arm and hand fatigues, thus can be implemented in the future augmented reality and virtual reality systems.
The unbearable Minority Report
Sound strange, but it all started one night when I watched the movie with my buddies, in short, we were drunk and decided to watch Minority Report featuring Tom Cruise as a cop in the year 2054. Intoxicated, I started noticing in the beautiful holographic computer that we may or may not use in the future, then Tom Cruise started to dance, wait no, he interacts with the computer with his hand hovering in the air, where all his fingers are occupied, it started to bugged the way he does so. What is wrong with it? The way Tom Cruise interact with future computer, to me, is unreasonable, it requires a lot of attention (human's very limited resources) in hand movements, the (precise) position of every single finger in the air, also ton of gestures like we all become flight attendants in the future world.
This has bugged me so much, I got me thinking how to create ways of interaction that do not require much hand movements, a lot of learning a.k.a effortless interactions.
Oddly enough, this photo contains a problem I'm trying to solve
Timespan
It took over a year since I suffered the Minority report tragedy until I have a clear idea what should be done, then another year for the proof of concept to MVP, which can be divided into 4 phases.
Ideation: finding solutions for effortless interaction in XR. The outcome of this phase was an approach of using thumb to control in XR, and put it into my thesis work at Vaasa University of Applied Sciences
Proof of concept: a first bulky and ugly device was created in order to prove the feasibility of effortless interaction using a thumb mounted device. The projected turned into "SoundxVision" at this stage.
Prototype: convert the PoC into a smaller package and implemented it into a hand tracking system
Input Exploration Kit: polishing the prototype into a more appealing package and community adaptation.
Acknowledgements
In this journey, the SoundxVision team has made it possible to make the project this far including
Nam Pham as Marketing specialist
Linh Trinh as Industrial Designer
Olli Tiilikainen as HCI specialist
Dipanjan Das as Networking specialist
And
OpenAR.fi team where I'm working as project coordinator, helped me in improving the ergonomics, giving ideas for further developments.
Helsinki XR Center where the prototype and input Exploration phase happened
Dr. Chao Gao, my thesis supervisor which helped me with Bluetooth Low Energy and getting the necessary components for the PoC.
Bao Vu, my classmate at VAMK, who helped me with hardware wiring for the PoC.