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Logitech's "Mouse that Feels"
Jayvz writes "There is short article on CNN saying that Logitech is to release the iFell MouseMan this fall. It vibrates (or rather feed-back) as you move your cursor over "texturized" pictures. " I saw a variation on this way bacj that was quite practical, but wasn't "texture" it was more "magnetic" (resize a window and have it feel like you're stretching a rubber band... drag a window to a border a feel resistance). Awesome stuff, but I'll believe it when its happening on my desk.
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My users don't need goddamned force feedback from a device that MS can't get to work with an ATI card and SimCity3K...er, "an essential application." They don't need a mouse that has radar for the corner of the screen, or something that buzzes angrily when they try to install any app not written by MS.
All you hardware people: stop inventing useless shit and build me a mouse that doesn't vacuum up my stupid users' bagel crumbs. That'll be the day.
-jpowers
-jpowers
She had a box, which you had to move a knob and then report on what type of texture you feel. It was controlled by magnets.
Fight Spammers!
Reuters:
Without the pad, it's not Dance Dance Revolution, it's Listen
I shudder to think what effects the fabled Blue Screen Of Death might impart...
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Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
I'm not saying that I wouldn't want force feedback when I move over something, because I do. My question relies more on, will Logitech create Linux drivers for it when it comes out? I still have yet to see full use out of my four button Logitech mouse (I don't have the skill to do what I want with it, nor the time to learn the skill), and from what I have been able to decern from their site they have no plans on porting the software they created for Win9x to Linux, or NT for that matter.
I am about to contact Logitech and request full Linux support.
Their website for contacting Logitech is here.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
First, we have no buttons...
And no mouse balls (optical)
Now we have fake resistance/texture
Soon, we'll have retinal-projection displays (as They already have prototypes).
At what point does it become more cost-effective to just close your eyes and think of neat stuff?
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1) Purchase a iFell MouseMan
2) Install the mouse
3) Search for texturized porn
I want an alarm clock that can feel pain... ;)
Bzzzzzt..."AAAAaaaaarrrgh!!!" Thud.
Won't it be hard to do feedback mouse using an optical mouse?
Making my *fingers* vibrate isn't much of a come-on. But if they develop a doohickey that will do things to my limbic system, as the famous metal sphereoid did in Woody Allen's science-fiction sendup Sleeper, well, I'll whip out that drastic plastic faster than you can say "Linda Lovelace does LinuxWorld."
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
There is work on this topic going back to the turn of the century by David Katz in Sweden. He used to claim that roughness had form components for rougher surfaces, and was dominated by vibration for smoother surfaces.
More recent studies have focussed on surfaces about as rough as 400 grit sandpaper or rougher. This would correspond to Katz' form region of roughness. It is quite clear that vibration has absolutely nothing to do with roughness perception in this regime. It is purely spatial, and nearly 100% based on the firing of mechanoreceptors sensitive to pressure on the skin. Do a Medline search on my name to find out more.
There is some doubt about roughness over finer surfaces, as the models have not been adequately tested yet. But psychophysical studies consistently find roughness to be purely spatial, and some studies even adapt the skin to vibration to determine if there is "cross talk" between vibration senses and roughness. Indeed, any such crosstalk is minimal.
The point I am making is that taking a three dimensional surface and exploring it with your finger is dramatically different from receiving a one dimensional interpretation of the surface through vibration. And I only refer to roughness, which is only one dimension of the textural components of an object. There is also hardness/softness, temperature, not to mention actual three dimensional conformation.
And in fact this mouse is not even translating surface texturet to vibration. It is increasing force feedback to correspond to roughness in some sense. It will be tougher to push the mouse over sandpaper than glass.
...the iFell MouseMan...
I'll get one of these when I can also buy the iCan'tGetUp Keyboards and imHavingTroubleBreathing Joystick.
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Hope it doesn't use batteries. My secretary found out the pager vibrated and wore the batteries out.
We needed to sell something like this back when I was doing tech support, except that instead of vibrating it could deliver a powerful electric shock when the support rep generated a special DMTF tone. On more than one occasion I could have really used the ability to administer pain to the user. (The original suggestion was to wire thermite to the motherboard during the manufacturing process...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Instead of talking about it on /., you should run off and patent that idea. Working out how to control a pin grid array shouldn't be too hard.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
First I thought of porn (like everyone else it seems). then i say myself feeling for the borders of a window in order to resize it and think it'd be kinda cool, but couldn't put my finger on real value.. then it hit me.
wouldn't this make a terrific tool for the disabled? just come up with a brailey(sp) like code and all a blind person would have to do is move the mouse over the lines of text and he's reading it... the mouse would have to be very sensitive, but even if it isn't, with the right setup, heck it could feedback morse code back to the reader!.. just a thought
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Actually, vibration is probably best. While doing some programming using Immersion technology (used in the Logitech Mouse), there are demonstrations about increased accuracy using their technology that are quite impressive. While this was using the Wingman FF mouse - which is significantly different, because the Wingman supports directional forces while the iFeel Logitech does not - the idea is the same. Most of the effects humans feel can be mathmatically modeled best with vibrations. The math involved in haptics (essentially the study of force feedback) is very complicated, but suffice to say that doing a pin-grid array doesn't really add much to the sensation of what you feel. Pin-grid can be very helpful, but are poor at simulating reality. I don't proposed that Force Feedback, especially in their current implementations, are the end all solution, but the direction that they are trying to move them in is not agumentation, but simulation of the human touch.
The worst part is when it leaves messes all over the mouse pad when a program dumps core.
The enemies of Democracy are
To the contrary it seems to me that an interface like the pin-grid array would merely open the door to a myriad of problems. Remember that the more control over our environment we give the computer the more likely it is that someone will find a way to make that computer abuse said power. Just imagine a rash of viruses hitting AOLers with pin-grid pointing devices and having thousands of people in hospitals with the words "AOL SUX" tattooed on their hand by their own mouse!
gophish@wcnet.org
Saw one, a proof-of-concept for the visually handicapped.. A braille key, some TTL logic, and four wires to the serial port. About $30 in parts, cheapo $9 mouse included.
Couldn't find it in the IBM Patent database, so the concept is prolly free of licensing issues and such if you'd like to do it..
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...is create a mouse that I didn't have to click so damn hard. No - really. My carpal is bad, and Logitech doesn't help.
;)
I ended up hacking the damn thing (MouseMan Wheel) apart and finding the little copper spring (very little - 8mm x 2mm x ~.2mm) the controls the click force. Bend it just so - viola - touch-sensitive mouse. It's good, but not perfect. It took me a couple hours to get it just right, and although there's no appreciable click point, there's still too much motion for my tastes (2 or 3 mm at the end of the button).
But it sure would be nice, as some people posted here before, to have a true touch-sensitive mouse. Maybe with one big "button" that could be programmed in zones. This is one area where having source code does you very little good.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Diablo 2 -- too hot? OW MY HANDS! too cold? ugh, I can't move my mouse and hand!
:)
Quake? Lighting gun makes you shocked!
Yikes! Talk about realism!
Seriously, has there been any games or demos supporting this yet?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I remember back in 1992, at SIGGRAPH, I was watching a demonstration where someone (at UNC, I think) had spent a ton of research grant money on connecting a electron tunneling microscope to a force-feedback arm. In his demonstration, he showed how he used this to provide tactile sensations of the molecular surface being scanned. "I could actually _feel_ the surface of the molecules" he said.
There was a "cool" factor to this, certainly, but I said to myself, "Self, how is _feeling_ the molecule surface really useful for, well, anything? Will it make things easier to figure out what compounds will bond? Doubt it, unless you're good at braille." Basically, the whole thing seemed like a waste of money to me.
Years later, force feedback still has yet to impress me. There have been some things that are partially interesting (some FF 3D modeling tools recently), but on the whole, even in places where FF seems applicable (e.g. Driving games), it just doesn't work for me. This Logitech thing seems particularly useless...why would I want to feel my UI or images, again, unless I was blind.
John Carmack was quoted once as saying force-feedback was a gimick (feel free to let me know I'm misquoting). I tend to agree.
How about an application for blind people? Kind of like brail, maybe that when the mouse is passed over a certain area of the screen it starts vibrating one way or another.
Right now I know there are programs tha tread text and all, but this would actually let someone who cannot see use a computer on their own, along with the speech synthesizer.
I think this would be a great tool for people with this horrible problem.
ObCredit: I got that link from GeekNews.net.
Alex Bischoff
Interested in building a roof over your cubicle?
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Alex Bischoff
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In the late 70's (maybe the first couple of years of the 80's), Popular Electronics reported on a device that used a tiny video camera and a 64x64 grid of electrodes on the user's back to impart images. A user claiemd that it was probably comparable to a bad b&w television picture.
:)
I want to say that it was the one-page article right before the back cover of that issue, but it's been 20 years, so don't hold me to that
A normal mouse sometimes slips. The result is that no matter how hard you try, your pointer won't moved. Being in the spell of this interaction, I always start squishing and pushing the mouse because it seems that it it stuck. This always leaves me with a sore hand.
/made/ to refuse. Yuck!
And now this! A mouse that is
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
... incredibly good for tech support. Imagine a mouse that springs up and bashes an id10t on the head
There was a force-feedback mouse last year that was hardwired to a special mouse pad, and provided varying levels of resistance (like the controls of a plane or car) as configured by a game. It was very expensive, wouldn't work without the mouse pad, and didn't gain too much support form the industry. Sounds similar to the story we hear 40,000 times every time we see a comment about the optical mouse. :)
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Certainly vibrating controllers (such as the Playstation's) make my hands hurt in under a minute. Their manual acknowledges the danger, telling you not to use the vibration function if it makes your hand hurt.
Mousing also makes my hand hurt if I keep at it for a while - I use a trackpad instead of a mouse because of this - so I'm pretty skeptical that I want to add any extra resistance to a mouse.
Certainly the pin-grid array would be a better way to go - feel, not "feedback".
Does anyone else think that the porn site industry will get behind this?
On the Serious note... I think that the tactile feedback is nearly a necessity. I recently bought a Wacom Graphire and while it's kewl and I like the pen... The mouse is still strange. I still reach for my logitech quite often and have them both sitting in easy reach, mostly I use the Wacom for the wheel.
I think that this has the same principle as a good keyboard. I'm not quite as extreme to like old IBM keyboards... But a good Sun Type 5 is great to type on.
- Will you feel the cold in your hand if your app freezes? /dev/mouse?
- Will it bite you and pass bubonic plague?
- Will it run away in terror if you type cat >
- Will it sense lame jokes like these and automatically close the window before you click "Submit"?
THE PORN!! just think about it.. I cant wait!
-Its like Deja Vu all over again!-
The way they have been predicting the market lately this, IMO, pretty much locks things for Logitech. They have a winner on their hands.
Now if they could just such the damn blinkers off on their light mouse packaging so I can shop without going into a seizure, they'll conquer the world!
I really don't know how much I would like having something like this that I use all day long. I mean, it sounds nice. But isn't it really just eye-candy? Look at the transition effects in Win2k. They were going to be really cool, but now everyone I know just turns them off.
I get pissed when my mouse runs in to a piece of dirt on the desk and causes it to act different than I expect. I don't see how it will be much different if the app is going to be that dirt for me. Guess I'll wait and see though.
-Frijoles-
The problem with mice is that you've always had to execute fine motor control with no tactile feedback. It takes too much concentration and slows everything down. When you can feel a button, it will be much easier.
But vibration is not the ideal way to do it. What would be perfect is instead of the buttons, have a small pin-grid array (like those toys you can press your hand or face onto and they'll retain the contours on the other side) connected to electromagnetic actuators to create a small textured area so you can really feel fine details (especially edges) with your fingertips.
Of course, that would be much more expensive, but would greatly improve the usability of GUIs.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
I tried one of these (a feedback mouse) two years ago. I used it for two minutes and have pined for one since. It may be crude, but then what parts of a computer interface are not primitive? Look at the damn keyboard.
Anyway, this mouse was terrific, you could feel when you were over buttons, window edges, etc.
The idea that you will be able to feel textures in content (like porn) is kind of silly, IMHO. However, the benifits of bumps and textures for common mouse tasks are overwhelming. Talk about productivity improvements.
Try the GIMP with this, you can never go back. Feel which objects have been selected, get a gentle blip when two edges line up. Now, that's better than porn, I'll tell ya!
This paper is about research like that.
Vibration is indeed useful, I never meant to dispute that. However, I still think a pin grid array would be more useful (provided it had high-enough resolution).
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.