DOBI: Dynamic Opportunistic Body Input via Spare Joint Recruitment for Hands-Free XR
2026-08-31 • Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors explore how people can control virtual environments using parts of their body other than their hands, especially when their hands are busy doing other tasks. They studied how users naturally move different body parts to interact and found that these movements follow simple patterns. Based on this, they created DOBI, a system that lets users select something by looking at it, choose which body part to use with a quick gesture, and then control it by moving that body part. Their tests showed DOBI works well and is easy to use even when people’s hands are occupied.
Extended Reality (XR)opportunistic body inputkinematicsprincipal component analysis1D Fitts' lawgaze trackinguser interface (UI)dual-task performanceSystem Usability Scale (SUS)
Authors
Rachel Kim, Xun Qian, Sang Ho Yoon
Abstract
Extended Reality (XR) systems are often most useful when users are engaged in ongoing physical tasks, yet current interaction techniques still largely assume the hands are available. We present opportunistic body input, an interaction paradigm that redirects continuous XR control to whichever available body region remains free in the moment. To investigate how users naturally coordinate these spare-body movements, we conducted an elicitation study across six hand-busy scenarios. We found that while users' preferred spare body regions shift dynamically based on physical constraints, the resulting spontaneous movements share a consistent, low-dimensional kinematic structure organized around a dominant principal axis. Building on these findings, we present DOBI (Dynamic Opportunistic Body Input), a real-time XR technique that uses gaze to target a UI element, a brief trigger gesture to identify the recruited spare body region, and the region's subsequent motion to drive continuous 1D control. A 1D Fitts' law study establishes the baseline motor performance of this paradigm across four distinct body regions, achieving throughputs up to 2.62 bits/s with an overall 5.0% error rate, and a dual-task usability study shows that DOBI supports reliable, low-effort control (SUS = 84.2) while users remain engaged in realistic hand-busy activities.