Pranav
Mistry, who earlier had made headlines for his invention Sixth Sense
and even received Popular Science 2009 Invention Award for it, has now
invented yet another similar device and this time its invisible – A
mouse and amusingly it costs just 20$ to build its prototype.
The
perpetual changes in computer technology & web has seen many
evolutions, right from large room size CPUs to miroprogrammed slim
netbooks, heavy bulky monitors to thin LCDs, few MBs capacity hard disks
to trillion capacity HDs but in all these what remained nearly
unchanged and un-evolved is mouse – moving it around to help us interact
computer.
Mouseless
is an invisible computer mouse project done in in MIT Fluid Interfaces
Group headed by Pranav Mistry, this invisible mouse provides the
familiarity of interaction of a physical mouse without actually needing a
real hardware mouse, hence removes the requirement of having a physical
mouse altogether but still provides the intuitive interaction of a
physical mouse that everyone is familiar with.
Mouseless
consists of – (1) an Infrared (IR) laser beam, (2) an Infrared camera
and both embedded in the computer itself. The laser beam module is
modified with a line cap and placed such that it creates a plane of IR
laser just above the surface the computer sits on. The user cups their
hand, as if a physical mouse was present underneath, and the laser beam
lights up the hand which is in contact with the surface. The IR camera
detects those bright IR blobs using computer vision. The change in the
position and arrangements of these blobs are interpreted as mouse cursor
movement and mouse clicks. As the user moves their hand the cursor on
screen moves accordingly. When the user taps their index finger, the
size of the blob changes and the camera recognizes the intended mouse
click.
Invisible mouse from MIT researchers
Jan 02, 2011