Evaluation of Interaction Techniques for Early Phase Satellite Design in Immersive AR

In this paper, we present a new controller-based interaction technique on the Microsoft HoloLens to support communication for the early phase satellite design at the Concurrent Engineering Facility (CEF). We design a virtual satellite with virtual moveable objects utilizing two different interaction methods: the default hand gesture-based interaction method and a novel controller-based interaction method for rotation and translation of satellite components in immersive augmented reality. In order to evaluate our method, we conduct a perceptual study with 12 participants. We apply multiple performance metrics for each user on both methods. Additionally, we measure user preferences and ease of use. Our results show that our controller-based method is significantly more precise for placing objects (consisting of position and orientation). Furthermore, it is less time consuming than the hand gesture-based method and more preferred by the participants.