Anomalies in measuring speed and other dynamic properties with touchscreens and tablets

Abstract

Touchscreens and tablets are often used in different studies and applications to capture high-resolution drawing, handwriting, or signatures. Several studies tend to analyse different properties, such as peaks or changes of the time derivatives of the coordinates; like velocity, angular velocity, acceleration or jerk of the movements. These are substantial features to analyse drawing, analyse or recognize handwriting, to examine the fluency of handwriting or verify signatures. The reliability of such a study strongly depends on the fidelity of the acquired data. We have tested several touchscreens and tablets which are widely used in different research studies, focusing on the resolution and accuracy of the coordinates and the uniformity of sampling. We have found that the vendors’ performance specifications (to the extent the vendor gives meaningful specifications) may seriously deviate from reality. Even if some of the raw data may look satisfactory at first sight, our examination uncovered several potentially significant bad behaviors, and instances in which the specifications from the vendors are, at best, misleading and incompletely informative. Some authors mention that the reliability of tablet data is unclear [Ha13, Fr05], but researchers may underestimate to what extent it could influence their results. This paper uncovers some aspects of the unreliability of the data and emphasizes the importance of understanding and addressing (or at least, knowing) the revealed problems prior to any analysis.