The overall objective of this research is to understand how the design of touchless gestural interfaces incorporated into the common computing environment can optimize productivity and efficiency while not exposing users to ergonomic risks. This proposal expands upon our previous OERC research project [1] to develop guidelines for optimizing and tuning system control parameters and algorithms for touchless gestures.

Specifically, we propose to perform a series of experiments to quantify:

1. motor controllability of finger and limb movements in each spatial direction in the user’s ideal gesture space

2. optimal control/display transfer functions for software implementation of pointer acceleration (enhance pointer precision) models for different finger and limb motions and spatial directions

3. the influence of arm support locations on the above parameters

Each of the above will be evaluated in the context of not just performance, but also on reducing negative effects on user ergonomic outcomes, such as muscular effort, discomfort, and usability.