Intermittent control as a model of mouse movements

Álvarez Martín, J. A. , Gollee, H. , Müller, J. and Murray-Smith, R. (2021) Intermittent control as a model of mouse movements. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 28(5), 35. (doi: 10.1145/3461836)

Abstract

We present Intermittent Control (IC) models as a candidate framework for modelling human input movements in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI). IC differs from continuous control in that users are not assumed to use feedback to adjust their movements continuously, but only when the difference between the observed pointer position and predicted pointer positions becomes large. We use a parameter optimisation approach to identify the parameters of an intermittent controller from experimental data, where users performed one-dimensional mouse movements in a reciprocal pointing task. Compared to previous published work with continuous control models, based on the Kullback–Leibler divergence from the experimental observations, IC is better able to generatively reproduce the distinctive dynamical features and variability of the pointing task across participants and over repeated tasks. IC is compatible with current physiological and psychological theory and provides insight into the source of variability in HCI tasks.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Murray-Smith, Professor Roderick and Gollee, Dr Henrik and Alvarez Martin, Mr Alberto
• Authors: Álvarez Martín, J. A., Gollee, H., Müller, J., and Murray-Smith, R.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science; College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Biomedical Engineering
• Journal Name: ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
• Publisher: ACM Press
• ISSN: 1073-0516
• ISSN (Online): 1557-7325
• Published Online: 21 August 2021
• Copyright Holders: © 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
• First Published: First published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 28(5):35
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
300982		Exploiting Closed-Loop Aspects in Computationally and Data Intensive Analytics	Roderick Murray-Smith	Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)	EP/R018634/1	Computing Science