Two‐Finger Gestures for 6DOF Manipulation of 3D Objects

Multitouch input devices afford effective solutions for 6DOF (six Degrees of Freedom) manipulation of 3D objects. Mainly focusing on large‐size multitouch screens, existing solutions typically require at least three fingers and bimanual interaction for full 6DOF manipulation. However, single‐hand, two‐finger operations are preferred especially for portable multitouch devices (e.g., popular smartphones) to cause less hand occlusion and relieve the other hand for necessary tasks like holding the devices. Our key idea for full 6DOF control using only two contact fingers is to introduce two manipulation modes and two corresponding gestures by examining the moving characteristics of the two fingers, instead of the number of fingers or the directness of individual fingers as done in previous works. We solve the resulting binary classification problem using a learning‐based approach. Our pilot experiment shows that with only two contact fingers and typically unimanual interaction, our technique is comparable to or even better than the state‐of‐the‐art techniques.