Gesture-Based Manipulation of Virtual Terrains on an Augmented Reality Environment

This paper presents a free hand interface for modeling virtual terrains in an augmented reality environment. A secondary contribution of this work is to present a study of a set of suitable gestures that allows the manipulation of virtual terrains interactively, using augmented reality markers and the Leap Motion Controller. To demonstrate the study, an application was developed to allow the user to interact with the virtual terrain directly with his/her bare hands. Virtual objects were augmented using fiducial markers and the detection is done through the AVRLib Library. In our test layout, both markers and controller are co-planar. The application was tested and evaluated by six subjects. None of the subjects had previous knowledge on how to use the Leap Motion controller or the nature of the application.