Finger-Mounted 3D Mouse From Undergrads
Posted Friday, May 18th, 2007, at 11:53 am Eastern by Mark Wallace
A team of five undergraduate students from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute has designed a prototype of what looks to be a cool 3D mouse that you wear on your finger like a ring. The MagicMouse works using ultrasound receivers that picks up sound waves emitted by the ring. You can move around in three axes at the moment, and the students are working on adding gestural functionality like mouse clicks as well. You can watch a video of the thing, if you can get the page to load. If you can’t, and you want to see some similar technology, watch this YouTube video, which demonstrates cursor control based on a user’s hand gestures in space — both hands — with no transmitting technology involved. Interesting.
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I just received a 3dconnexion controller earlier this week as a gift, and I find I can’t drag myself away from zooming around Google Earth with it. After using it for a while I realized how little penetration there’s been with innovative controllers. Hopefully things like this and the Wii controller are signs that the next generation is ready to embrace alternative human computer interface devices. Thanks for the story, Mark.
Watched the video - very cool. If they can make it usable in an ergonomic position for 2-D stuff (i.e. hand resting on desk, so you don’t need to hold it in the air *all the time*), I think they have a killer product.
And check out these gloves: http://www.vrealities.com/glove.html