Intuitive Interface for Pattern Recognition in Virtual Reality

Sammanfattning: In this thesis we explore natural user interfaces and pattern recognition approaches. We did this by designing and developing an artifact which acts as an interactive spell-casting experience in virtual reality. In the artifact the user draws patterns to cause magical effects, such as summoning balls of fire, and gusts of wind. While there are other similar solutions available, they only allow a limited level of detail to the patterns that can be recognised. To make an experience that feels intuitive to the user, an interface capable of detecting advanced patterns is required. Furthermore, a pattern recognition solution able to read these advanced patterns, without causing loss of frame rate, is an absolute prerequisite when the experience is entirely in virtual reality. We pose the question: how can you create a natural user interface that reads a player's intricate hand motions to execute various actions in a Virtual Reality gameplay environment? The pattern recognition system we developed is based on template matching, supported by a syntactic pattern recognition approach. With our intuitive interface we made it possible for the system to read a user’s drawn patterns in a 3D space as a 2D drawing. To keep it easy for us to add new patterns to the system’s library, we created a system that allowed us to quickly and easily add additional patterns for the system to recognise. We evaluated the artifact by conducting an experiment with eleven participants. The experiment was a user study consisting of a structured observation, where the users got to draw patterns as we observed them, followed by a semi-structured interview, to generate elaborate qualitative data. The final artifact does not provide a viable solution in and of itself, but it does have great potential for future work. The results show that the intuitiveness of the interface in a system like this relies heavily on the other parts connected to the interface, such as the leniency on the accuracy of the pattern recognition system.