Alternatives using the Leap Motion to extend mid-air word-gesture keyboards.

Lately, the use of touchless, mid-air, gesture-based interactions has increased significantly due to the popularity of augmented and virtual reality and advances in other industries (e.g., medicine, gaming), and with this wide-spread application comes the need for effecient, mid-air text-entry. Word-gesture keyboards have garnered attention in recent years, now coming standard on most Android devices, offering efficient means of gesture-based text-entry. For the first time, Markussen et al. combined the two with the inception of Vulture \cite{ref_vulture}, the first mid-air, word-gesture keyboard, providing the fastest means of mid-air text-entry yet. This thesis builds on the findings of Markussen et al. and presents alternatives means for word separation in mid-air text-entry for word-gesture keyboards, exploring and identifying the problems of new techniques and presenting possible solutions. Of the new techniques, a bimodal approach shows great promise, reaching a mean text-entry rate of 15.8 Words Per Minutes for a single session with no training.