Physics Based Multi-Touch Movement Interface Creation for 3D Modeling and Simulation

Current multi-touch pressure sensitive Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware and software (e.g., Apple iPhones, Android Phones, etc.) allow users to seamlessly interact with software applications using gestures, but underutilize their potential by only employing a limited set of Human Computer Interactions (HCI) (e.g., panning, zooming, etc.) Multi-touch pressure sensitive hand movements, hereafter called gestures, combined with real-time physics can result in more realistic and intuitive software applications. JHT"s goal is to research, define, and develop reusable real-time physics, navigation, and meta gestures API software and standards for use in training, simulations, architectural design, and entertainment software applications on COTS multi-touch hardware. JHT"s efforts will identify an initial set of user-defined gestures with metrics by creating a gesture data collection apparatus, gathering data using the apparatus, and analyzing it. The phase I exploratory study will identify user-defined gestures by presenting the effects of gestures to participants to elicit causes meant to invoke them. The exploratory development and testing of the physics and navigation gestures Application Programming Interface (API) will require a physics visualization application to be created by developing a render engine and integrating a physics engine with it.