Combining multi-touch input and device movement for 3D manipulations in mobile augmented reality environments

Nowadays, handheld devices are capable of displaying augmented environments in which virtual content overlaps reality. To interact with these environments it is necessary to use a manipulation technique. The objective of a manipulation technique is to define how the input data modify the properties of the virtual objects. Current devices have multi-touch screens that can serve as input. Additionally, the position and rotation of the device can also be used as input creating both an opportunity and a design challenge. In this paper we compared three manipulation techniques which namely employ multi-touch, device position and a combination of both. A user evaluation on a docking task revealed that combining multi-touch and device movement yields the best task completion time and efficiency. Nevertheless, using only the device movement and orientation is more intuitive and performs worse only in large rotations.