On-Body Interaction: Embodied Cognition MeetsSensor/Actuator Engineering to Design New Interfaces

Abstract

On-body technologies are emerging as a new paradigm in human computer interaction. Instead of moving a mouse or tapping a touch surface, people can use whole-body movements to navigate in games, gesture in mid-air to interact with large displays, or touch their forearm to control a mobile phone. First promising applications are being investigated or have been demonstrated in mobile computing, healthcare, or sports. Two areas of research have been contributing to this paradigm. Research on embodied cognition suggests that the body should no longer be treated as a passive actuator of input devices but as something that needs to be carefully designed for and as something that offers unique new possibilities in interaction. Embodied cognition has become a prominent candidate for outlining what we can and cannot do in on-body interaction. Research on interactive technologies for the body is opening up new avenues for human-computer interaction, by contributing body-based sensing input and output modalities with more body compatible form factors. Together, these areas allow the design and implementation of new user interfaces; however, they are rarely in direct contact with each other. The intended outcome of the seminar was a research agenda for on-body technologies based on synergies between these two views. We therefore brought together a group of researchers from embodied cognition (including psychology, robotics, human-computer interaction, and sociology) as well as sensor/actuator engineering (including computer science, materials science, electrical engineering). These groups worked together toward outlining a research agenda for on-body technologies, in part using a bottom-up process at the seminar, in part using structured answers to questions in advance of the seminar. Key topics for discussion included (1) advances in on-body sensors and actuators, in particular how to drive the technical development from work on embodied cognition and the body, (2) cognitive consequences of on-body technologies, (3) how to take the peculiarities and possibilities of the body into consideration, (4) how to evaluate on-body technology, and (5) application areas of on-body technologies.