(Touch → Gesometric → Five Point Orient “5-Finger-Orient”)

The “5-finger-orient” gesture analyses the orientation of a group of five touch points. The orient algorithm uses the relative position of five touch points to identify which touchpoint is likely to be the users thumb. The thumb is then removed from the cluster processing and the remaining four fingers are used to establish the approximate orientation of the users hand. This gesture ONLY works with five touch points and can be used as a reliable measure of user orientation when the hand is placed in a “natural” resting position.

<Gesture id="5-finger-orient" type="orient">
    <match>
        <action>
            <initial>
                <cluster point_number="5"/>
            </initial>
        </action>
    </match>
    <analysis>
        <algorithm class="kinemetric" type="continuous">
            <library module="orient"/>
            <returns>
                <property id="orient_dx" result="orient_dx"/>
                <property id="orient_dy" result="orient_dy"/>
                <property id="orient_thumbID" result="thumbID"/>
            </returns>
        </algorithm>
    </analysis>    
    <mapping>
        <update dispatch_type="continuous">
            <gesture_event type="orient">
                <property ref="orient_dx"/>
                <property ref="orient_dy"/>
                <property ref="orient_thumbID"/>
            </gesture_event>
        </update>
    </mapping>
</Gesture>

The vector components returned by the orientation gesture can be used to align digital content to the user's calculated position and angle of orientation. This step is usually applied in the application layer and can be very effective tool improving readability of content in a multi-user omni-directional UI.

A future augmentation of this gesture is to use touch point size to cross check the calculated identification of the users thumb. additionally the orient algorithm will be extended to include the ability to identify which hand the user is presenting (left or right). This feature may can have a range of uses as developers can define different interface behaviors for the left and right hand or define an approximate viewing position of the user using a bi-manual orientation gesture.