AiRType: An Air-tapping Keyboard for Augmented Reality Environments

Abstract

We present AiRType for AR/VR HMDs that enables text entry through bare hands for more natural perception. The hand models in the virtual environment mirror hand movements of the user and user targets and selects the keys via hand models. AiRType fully leverages the additional dimension without restraining the interaction space by users' arm lengths. It can be attached to anywhere and can be scaled freely. We evaluated and compared AiRType with the baseline-the built-in keyboard of Magic Leap 1. AiRType shows 27% decrease in the error rate, 3.3% increase in character-per-second, and 9.4% increase in user satisfaction.