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Mouse Begone: Use Head Movements And IR Instead

Posted by timothy on from the invest-in-3m-reflectors dept.

Gonzodoggy writes: "Saw this on my local news last night. There's a company in Oregon that is trying to eliminate the mouse as we know it. The company is called Naturalpoint. Basically, you place a reflective dot on your forehead or, for laptop users, a plastic ring on your finger. Then when you move your head or your finger, the mouse goes where you point. The demo on the news showed a gamer making the game look where he looked, allowing him to keep both hands on the keyboard" Looks like a cool idea, but very Windows only for now. So I guess I'll have to rig up a trackball underfoot, and just fool my housemates into thinking I was controlling the cursor with my changing glances.

12 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Ooops... by mholve · · Score: 5

    I sneezed and deleted my C:\WINDOWS directory!

    1. Re:Ooops... by Nexx · · Score: 3

      You make that sound like it's a bad thing!
      --

  2. Bad for business by Aggrazel · · Score: 5

    This is not going to make it easy to click off the window downloading pr0n right as the boss walks in...

    "No really honey, I wasn't looking at her, it just popped on the screen by a virus."

    "uh huh"

    1. Re:Bad for business by flynt · · Score: 5

      You call your boss honey?

  3. fun pranks by YoJ · · Score: 3
    The comment about using your foot to fool people into thinking you can move the mouse by thought made me think about some good pranks I've played on people in college.

    One fun prank with mice is to go to the computer lab and switch the cables for two adjacent computers. You sit at one computer with a mouse and wait for someone to sit next to you. Your mouse controls their cursor, and their mouse controls your cursor. You start out by watching what they are doing and trying to mimic their movements (and don't laugh!) Then you start randomly sliding one direction consistently, or moving to a different place on the screen whenever they look away. See how long it takes for them to figure it out!

    Another fun time was when we discovered that by default our lab had X permissions for anyone in the lab to connect to any display. It was great fun sending "dialog boxes" to random users that told them weird things to do to "fix" the system. For example, "WARNING! Monitor Overheat. Your monitor is overheating, please turn it off and then back on before continuing." Or make a fake "ICQ" type message that purports to come from a cute girl also in the room - see if you can get the victim to go up to the cute girl and talk to her!

  4. Re:This could be cool.. by Nidhogg · · Score: 4
    Heh. I had the same concern with sniping in Half-life TFC.

    To make things worse imagine having the hiccups while playing with this thing responding to your forehead.

    "Dude. What the hell are you shooting at?"
    "Shut up! I've got the fscking hiccups!"

  5. Been in use for a while now... by Golias · · Score: 3
    I know somebody who had a stroke and lost the use of almost everything. He has been using a head-mounted laser-pointer as his ONLY interface for years now. (He types using a fuzzy-logic driven selection system like Stephen Hawkings uses... point at a letter, and a menu of your most common words comes up, which changes as you select more letters; select a word, and the menu gives you likely phrases, etc.) It's time-consuming to type that way, but as a mouse-pointer the gadget works like a champ.

    While it has been a boon to those with disabiliies, a gadget like this for the rest of us would probably reduce RSI quite a bit. As much as people complain about keyboards, unergonomic mouse techniques are probably responsible for at least as many injuries.

    --

    Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  6. Been around for a while! by autocracy · · Score: 3
    It's called a head mouse (sort of like the head crabs in Half Life, but you control them instead of vice-versa). They were developed for people who have carpal tunnel / RSIs.

    I once saw an interview with somebody using one - they found it easier than a normal mouse for average (business) work, and alright for games like StarCraft. Clicking was done with your foot (too bad it wasn't by tilting your head forward into a blunt object). The only real complaint he had was when playing Quake: he couldn't look around 'cause then he couldn't aim - so he got fragged. And he couldn't aim because he had to look around to see if people were coming from other directions - he got fragged again!

    I can't be karma whoring - I've already hit 50!

    --
    SIG: HUP
  7. Many rapid head movements? by NineNine · · Score: 4

    I don't think that this would be very useful. The head/neck wasn't designed for many, rapid, precise movements all day long (say, at work). The hand/wrist/arm was. Besides, I'd much rather have repetitive stress in my write than in my neck.

    1. Re:Many rapid head movements? by Eoli · · Score: 5

      There are other systems out there that can do similar things with eye movement, so you can save your neck.

      Some good research from Stanford.

      A practical demonstration.

      Some people have no choice but to use such devices unfortunately.

  8. Already exists by Eoli · · Score: 3

    Check out Headmaster Plus. I work in adaptive technology and this kind of stuff has been going on for a few years now.

  9. Double-clicking is fun by Eoli · · Score: 5

    Just bang your head on the desk twice in rapid succession. Most computer users do this a few times a day anyway.