Freeze view touch and finger gesture based interaction methods for handheld augmented reality interfaces

Interaction techniques for handheld mobile Augmented Reality (AR) often focus on device-centric methods based around touch input. However, users may not be able to easily interact with virtual objects in mobile AR scenes if they are holding the handheld device with one hand and touching the screen with the other, while at the same time trying to maintain visual tracking of an AR marker. In this paper we explore novel interaction methods for handheld mobile AR that overcomes this problem. We investigate two different approaches; (1) freeze view touch and (2) finger gesture based interaction. We describe how each method is implemented and present findings from a user experiment comparing virtual object manipulation with these techniques to more traditional touch methods.