Keyboardless Keyboard: Smart Phone Gyroscope for Improved User Interface

In this work, we provide a new software input mechanism using solely the smart phone gyroscope to detect taps made near the phone. Multiple experiments were conducted to determine the best conditions for enabling an interface that leverages taps made to a surface on which a device is placed. The experiments considered the impact of the phone type, the presence of a phone case, the surface type, and the sample rate. Taps made in eight different directions and at different distances ranging from on the side of the phone to 10 inches away from the phone were classified. The results motivated a keyboard layout that extends out from the smart phone, tripling the tapping area while still allowing full use of the smart phone touch screen. The successful classification of taps made on the prototype, called the keyboardless keyboard, opens a range of possibilities for an input interface which requires no hardware other than the smartphone's own gyroscope.