Body-Prop Interaction: Augmented Open Discs and Egocentric Body-Based Interaction for Exploring Immersive Visualizations

Immersive Visualizations of 3-dimensional scientific data pose unique interaction challenges. One challenge is to be able to interact with the visual volumetric representations of data using direct manipulation in a way that facilitates exploration and discovery, yet maintains data relationships. In this paper, we present Body-Prop Interaction, a novel tangible multimodal interface for immersive visualizations. Our interaction technique combines multiple input and output modalities with 3D printed open discs that are tracked and augmented with virtual information. To demonstrate our technique, we implemented interactive tasks for a volume visualization of graphite billet data. While demonstrated for this type of data visualization, our novel interaction technique has the potential to be used to interact with other types of augmented and virtual reality.