MOUSELESS

                           Mouseless

                                           

Mouseless is an invisible computer mouse that provides the familiarity of interaction of a physical mouse without actually needing a real hardware mouse.

MOUSELESS

As the computer mouse has remained largely unchanged over the last decades, we have become increasingly proficient at operating the two-button mouse. Recently, various multitouch and gestural interaction technologies have been explored as means to implement alternative methods to interact with a computer. Despite these advances in computing hardware technologies, the two-button computer mouse has remained the predominant means to interact with a computer. The Mouseless invention removes the requirement of having a physical mouse altogether but still provides the intuitive interaction of a physical mouse that we are familiar with. Mouseless consists of an Infrared (IR) laser beam (with line cap) and an Infrared camera. Both IR laser and IR camera are embedded in the computer. 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.
As we improve our computer vision algorithms, an extensive library of gestures could be implemented in addition to mouse movement and mouse clicks. Typical multitouch gestures, such as zooming in and out, as well as novel gestures, such as balling one’s fist are all possible. In addition, the use of multiple laser beams would allow for recognition of a wider range of free hand motions, enabling novel gestures that the hardware mouse cannot support.
We implemented a fully functional working prototype system of 'Mouseless' that costs approximate $20 to build.

Most user interface designers seem to agree that the mouse and keyboard arrangement that’s been popular so far can only last so long. No one knows, however, what exactly will replace it. Gesture technology is leading the pack, with video game and TV applications coming out this year. There’s a certain appeal to waving your hands in the air and controlling your machines like some sort of conductor of a robotic orchestra. The more versatile of these systems are dependent on gloves for the moment, but they’ll likely drop that restriction in the next few years. Mistry’s mouseless project is already a step in that direction, letting you use nothing but your hand to control your computer.

The ease in which you can use the mouseless setup belies it’s rather ingenuous system of hardware and software. A small infrared laser is fitted with a line cap so that it projects a thin plane of illuminating IR light near the flat surface it’s resting on. Your fingers catch and reflect this light and give off an IR glow. An infrared camera picks up the glowing points of light and computer vision software translates their location and configuration into commands for the cursor. The computer can distinguish between general movements, tapping with index or middle finger (which it translates as left and right clicks), flexing of all four fingers (used as a scroll feature), and a pinching motion used to drag and drop.                         

MOUSELESS HAND MOVEMENT

There are a couple of things that I think this user interface really gets right. First, it lets you rest your hands on the table top. Proponents of gesture controls often seem to forget that waving your arms in the air can get very tiring, and precision starts to fail as your shoulder aches. Mistry’s invisible mouse has much the same benefits of gesture controls but anchored to a flat surface you can rest on. Second, mouseless gives you a very primitive sense of physical feedback. While you can’t feel the IR laser, you can feel the table you’re sliding and tapping against, giving you some idea of if your motions are broad enough to be detected. This is far from the advanced haptics that we are likely to see in user interfaces of the far future, but it’s still better than nothing at all, which is what most other gesture controls offer.

MOUSELESS

Of course, there are some limitations to the invisible mouse as well. Foremost among these is the fact that it’s still trying to be a mouse. The mouseless project is pretty narrow. It’s a baby step forward in user interfaces when we may really need a leap. It also is limited to two dimensions, when we think and move in three. Keeping itself in 2D is probably why the project can be so easy to use and cheap, but it limits the long-term advantage over current hardwired systems.Despite it’s cool appearance, the mouseless project is really just a modified version of previous mice devices. We keep trying to build a better computer mouse and that’s both pragmatic and frustrating. This invisible mouse is neat, but it doesn’t really offer much more than an air mouse (which I still hate as a concept). I’m sure that Mistry and others will find some good uses for a mouse-like gesture control system that costs just $20. Yet the real story is likely to be the future devices that Mistry builds using the IR laser and camera technology. That tech might be able to make the controls of Sixth Sense more robust, it could convert normal monitors into touch screens, or it could make any surface interactive. There’s a lot of potential there, much more than can be adequately contained in a mouse.