Leveraging human movement in the ultimate display

Human movement is a "natural skill" employed to solve difficult problems in dynamics concerning the manipulation of a complex biomechanical system, the body, in an ever-changing environment. Continuous Interactive Simulation (CIS) is a technique that attempts to use this human capacity to solve problems in movement dynamics to solve problems concerning arbitrary dynamical systems. In this paper we test a simple CIS environment that allows a user to interact with an arbitrary dynamical system through continuous movement actions. Using this environment we construct an abstract representation of the well-known pole-cart, or inverted pendulum system. Next we undertake a usability trial and observe the way users explore key features of the system's dynamics. All users are able to discover the stable equilibria and the majority of users also discover the unstable equilibria of the system. The results confirm that even simple movement-based interfaces can be effective in engaging the human sensory-motor system in the exploration of nontrivial dynamical systems.