Title
Vidgets: modular mechanical widgets for mobile devices
Abstract
We present Vidgets, a family of mechanical widgets, specifically push buttons and rotary knobs that augment mobile devices with tangible user interfaces. When these widgets are attached to a mobile device and a user interacts with them, the widgets' nonlinear mechanical response shifts the device slightly and quickly, and this subtle motion can be detected by the accelerometer commonly equipped on mobile devices. We propose a physics-based model to understand the nonlinear mechanical response of widgets. This understanding enables us to design tactile force profiles of these widgets so that the resulting accelerometer signals become easy to recognize. We then develop a lightweight signal processing algorithm that analyzes the accelerometer signals and recognizes how the user interacts with the widgets in real time. Vidgets widgets are low-cost, compact, reconfigurable, and power efficient. They can form a diverse set of physical interfaces that enrich users' interactions with mobile devices in various practical scenarios. We demonstrate their use in three applications: photo capture with single-handed zoom, control of mobile games, and making a playable mobile music instrument.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1145/3306346.3322943
ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)
Keywords
Field
DocType
accelerometer, mechanical widget
Computer vision,Mobile music,Power efficient,Accelerometer,Zoom,Mobile device,Human–computer interaction,Artificial intelligence,Modular design,User interface,Signal processing algorithms,Physics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
38
4
0730-0301
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.34
0
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Chang Xiao111.36
Karl Bayer210.68
Changxi Zheng357137.17
Shree K. Nayar4123941538.46