Anatomy

Headset

Inertial measurement unit

Latency (audio)

Gene

World Wide Web

Engineering

Artificial intelligence

Chemistry

Index finger

Tapping

Proximal phalanx

Computer science

Tactile sensor

USable

Audiology

Ring finger

Finger tapping

Computer vision

Biochemistry

Medicine

Telecommunications

Mechanical engineering

Robot

Head-mounted Mixed Reality (MR) systems enable touch in­teraction on any physical surface. However, optical methods (i.e., with cameras on the headset) have difficulty in determin­ing the touch contact accurately. We show that a finger ring with Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) can substantially im­prove the accuracy of contact sensing from 84.74% to 98.61% (f1 score), with a low latency of 10 ms. We tested different ring wearing positions and tapping postures (e.g., with different fingers and parts). Results show that an IMU-based ring worn on the proximal phalanx of the index finger can accurately sense touch contact of most usable tapping postures. Partici­pants preferred wearing a ring for better user experience. Our approach can be used in combination with the optical touch sensing to provide robust and low-latency contact detection.

Accurate and Low-Latency Sensing of Touch Contact on Any Surface with Finger-Worn IMU Sensor