The authors designed a multi-touch system for controlling a robot. The controls are detailed in the picture below. They argue that the multi-touch system allows for an infinite amount of control styles with a 2D interface while using a joystick or some sort of hardware controller limits you by the hardware itself. After designing their initial input software the authors ran a series of usability tests. This helped them narrow down how people will naturally use their software for control.
This input style is important as we expand devices we want to control but maintain few controllers. People carry multi-touch devices around with them on a regular basis, and this project helps expand the use of those devices. An iPhone can be used to control most anything because of its multi-touch capability. The biggest problem with touch based systems is the lack of precision. Until we develop more precise finger reading algorithms these types of input devices remain only for devices that don't have to be precise. Future work on this would be to update controls to be more natural and respond intuitively.
You bring up a good point about control precision. I think they tried to emphasize that you need to provide affordances that clearly signal how to use the controls, but I think that multi-touch interfaces automatically introduce a set of affordance problems.
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