Computing is an integral part of our daily routines. However, despite numerous technological advances, how we interact with computers has changed little in the past few decades.Current systems use conventional input devices, such as a mouse, that require applications to define a complex, non- intuitive interaction language. This seminar present a video based platform for human-machine interfaces that provides functionality for robust, unencumbered interaction: ”The 4D Touchpad (4DT)”. The goal is direct interaction with interface components through intuitive actions and gestures based on visual interaction cue (VIC) paradigm.
The emphasis till today in software engineering was on optimizing two scarce resources: computer time and memory. With today’s plummeting hardware cost and increasingly powerful graphics oriented personal computing environment user efficiency became more important than that of the machine.
Thus high quality user interface are in many ways the last frontier in providing computing to a large variety of users, since hardware and software costs are now low enough to bring significant computing capability to our home and office. Now software engineering has recently given structure to a new discipline of user interface engineering which deals with user interface principles and methodologies.
A conventional interface usually requires additional hardware devices to represent users actions in a form comprehensible to a computer system. These devices restrict the pool of possible interactions to a subset that can be registered by the specific hardware device, e.g. two dimensional movements of a computer mouse. The user does not interact directly with the visualized interface, but he/she observes a representation of his/her actions on the screen instead.
Today is the age of human-centered computing and in this present scenario human computer interaction (HCI) must look to new technologies for building modern, natural, and intuitive interfaces. Video is one such technology. With the video interaction system, multiple concurrent users can involve in direct, robust and effective computing.
The user could also interact directly with the machine. The visual interaction cues (VICs) paradigm, the paradigm for video interaction system, uses a shared perceptual space between the user and the computer. In the shared space, the computer monitors the environment for sequences of expected user activity at locations corresponding to interface components.
The 4D Touchpad is a video-based computing platform based on the VICs paradigm. In the article we are going to discuss human computer interaction and the current interaction techniques, paradigm for vision based interaction, framework of VIC for interaction technique, concept of 4D and about 4D touchpad ,working of 4D touchpad and future work that is to be done.