How to Take a Brake from Embodied Locomotion - Seamless Status Control Methods for Seated Leaning Interfaces

Embodied locomotion, especially leaning, has one major problem. Effectively the regular functionality of the utilized body parts is overwritten. Thus, in this work, we propose 6 different status control methods that seamlessly switch off (brake) a seated leaning locomotion interface. Different input modalities, such as a physical button, voice, and gestures/metaphors, are used and evaluated against a baseline condition and a leaning interface with a bilateral transfer function. In a user study, participants were encouraged, but not forced to use these interfaces. They did, and the most diegetic interface, a hover-board metaphor, was the most preferred. However, the overall results are more heterogeneous and the interfaces vary in their suitability for different applications/scenarios. Therefore, we summarized the results in a guideline.