Abstract
Capacitive proximity sensors can be used to implement a variety of expressive input devices. They are especially suitable for Whole Body Interaction as they are small, robust, flexible, and can be both worn on the body or embedded into the environment. This chapter discusses technical challenges that arise when using capacitive sensors for tracking human motion, namely sensor shielding and ensuring both low latency and high sensitivity. A custom sensor design and an adaptive moving average filter presented here address these challenges. Two user studies evaluated these sensors as input modalities for different computer games. They found evidence that capacitive sensors offer a friendly but challenging behavior, being easy to learn but hard to master.
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Notes
- 1.
 For example,in theory objects need a ground connection for the capacitor to work. However, such a ground connection is provided by capacitive couplingbetween the object and the environment. Therefore, in practice a conductive ground connection is not needed.
- 2.
 Rail-to-Rail means that the output voltage can reach the full range of the input voltage.
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Acknowledgement
The user studies were planned, conducted, and analyzed by Annette Reiter, a graduate student I supervised.
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Wimmer, R. (2011). Capacitive Sensors for Whole Body Interaction. In: England, D. (eds) Whole Body Interaction. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-433-3_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-433-3_10
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