Unifying Events from Multiple Devices for Interpreting User Intentions through Natural Gestures

As technology evolves (e.g. 3D cameras, accelerometers, multitouch surfaces, etc.) new gestural interaction methods are becoming part of the everyday use of computational devices. This trend forces practitioners to develop applications for each interaction method individually. This paper tackles the problem of interpreting gestures in a multiple ways of interaction scenario, by focusing on the abstract gesture rather than on the technology or technologies used to generate it. This article describes the Flash Library for Interpreting Natural Gestures (FLING), a framework for developing multigestural applications integrated and running in different gestural-platforms. By offering an architecture for the integration and unification of different types of interaction, FLING eases scalability while presenting an environment for rapid prototyping by novice multi-gestural programmers. Throughout the article we analyse the benefits of this approach, comparing it with state of the art technologies, describe the framework architecture, and present several examples of applications and experiences of use.