Determination of Placement of a Body-Attached Mouse as a Pointing Input Device for Wearable Computers

We investigated the effects of placement of computer input devices on a user's body for the control of a wearable computer. This study involved 25 subjects performing selection tasks with a Touch pad mouse while wearing a wearable computer on their back and using a head mounted display. The each subject performed the tasks in 27 different combinations of four posture (sitting, kneeling, standing, and prone) and seven different placements of the Touch pad mouse on the subject's body (forearm, thigh by 2, torso by 2, and upper arm by 2). We measured the time and error rate to complete the selection of a circular target. The results for the effects due to posture showed there were similar time effects for sitting, standing, and kneeling. When examining the effects due to mouse position, the front of the thigh was shown to be the best position of the mouse. When the posturing and mouse position conditions were combined, the results indicated the thigh front mouse position would most appropriate for sitting kneeling, and standing postures, and the forearm mouse position is to be used for the prone position.