FistPointer

Also known as Thumbs-up pointer

In smartphone-based mobile VR, a hand held up in a thumbs-up pose behind the phone moves an on-screen pointer, and folding the thumb down selects, like pressing a joystick button.

How it works

The phone's rear camera, facing out of a cardboard viewer, detects the hand behind the phone. The hand's position in the camera image drives a pointer on the VR view, so the user points by moving the thumbs-up fist; folding the thumb is recognised as a click. Needs no extra hardware beyond the phone. Presented as a proof-of-concept with a shooting-style game and informal user impressions; no controlled performance study.

Papers

Akira Ishii, Takuya Adachi, Keigo Shima, Shuta Nakamae, Buntarou Shizuki, Shin Takahashi (2017). FistPointer: Target Selection Technique using Mid-air Interaction for Mobile VR Environment. Extended Abstracts of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '17) doi:10.1145/3027063.3049795