Gesture-based Guidance for Navigation in Virtual Environments.

Different navigation aids (text, audio, maps, arrows, etc.) are used in complex virtual environments (VEs) to assist users in task operation and performance enhancement. Most current studies use cognitive cues to assist users during navigation and path selection in VEs. However, novices need to know which gesture to execute to carry out specific navigation. In this paper, a new concept of navigation aid is proposed that uses visual aids with gestural interaction during navigation tasks. The proposed aids provide two-fold guidance in the VE: they assist users in selecting the correct path and posing the correct gestures. In addition, it proposes fingertip pointing-based gestures for realistic navigation inside the VE to achieve high performance and usability using simple and lightweight gestures. Furthermore, the proposed aids (gesture guides) are compared with existing aids such as audio, textual, arrow-casting + textual, and 3D map + textual aids in terms of performance and usability. A VE is designed and implemented using OpenGL for experimental purposes. The Leap Motion controller is used for hand gesture recognition and interaction with VE. The System Usability Scale (SUS) is used for assessing system usability. Experimental results show comparatively improved performance and high usability for the proposed aids as compared to audio, textual, arrow-casting + textual, and 3D map + textual aids.