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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

[mu]Jawstures : jaw-teeth microgestures for discreet hands-and-eyes-free mobile device interaction

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

We often perform activities that situationally impair us, decreasing our ability to interact with mobile devices when needed. These impairments manifest physically, by preventing us from using our hands and eyes when already being devoted to other ongoing processes (i.e., biking, driving, etc), and socially, by making certain interaction modalities inappropriate given social norms, etiquette, and rules of engagement. Researchers have investigated using jaw and teeth microgestures as a discreet hands-and- eyes-free solution for mobile device interaction while situationally impaired. However, an opportunity remains to investigate ways to wirelessly and unobtrusively sense these gestures, and further explore and evaluate the design space for jaw and teeth microgestures in the context of general-purpose Human Computer Interaction. This thesis makes four major contributions to the exploration of jaw and teeth microgestures. Through an iterative prototyping process, the work contributes attachable, miniaturized, wireless sensor nodes that are placed bilaterally behind the ears to unobtrusively sense jaw-teeth microgestures with 88% accuracy in a stationary context. The thesis also presents a hyper-personalized mobile application that permits training jaw-teeth gestures and mapping them to mobile device commands. The work further contributes a universal teeth contact and jaw-teeth gesture taxonomy, which is evaluated for its comfort and usability. Finally, it contributes an exploration of the potential use cases of jaw-teeth-gesture-based mobile device interaction.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master
Department dc:contributor.department
Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Grantor dc:publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year dc:date.issued
2019

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Vega Gálvez, Tomás Alfonso.
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Pattie Maes.

Subjects

dc:subject × 1

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.
Language dc:language.iso
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/154119
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/154119

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
MIT
Base URL
dspace.mit.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Vega Gálvez, Tomás Alfonso.. [mu]Jawstures : jaw-teeth microgestures for discreet hands-and-eyes-free mobile device interaction. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/154119