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Airborne Mouse
edpin writes "CNN is reporting this new mouse that works without a surface. You hold the device in your hand and tilt it to where on screen you want it to go. It uses a similar technique to "rock and scroll" developed by Compaq (now HP) a while ago."
This is, in fact, no relation to Mighty Mouse.
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
If it flies it's a bat, not a mouse.
Imagine what a lanparty would look like with a buncha guys throwing their hands up in the air to avoid being railed...
This isn't a good way to get out of that geek stereotype....
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
This isn't anything new - for about the last year or so, we've had a mouse just like that for presentations here at my university - in fact, I think we've got one in each of electronic classrooms for instructors to use. And it doubles as a laser pointer!
"What we have here, is a failure to communicate." - Cool Hand Luke
this has very limited applications. I think it will be difficult to play games with this, since I use the keyboard also. Then there is the issue of whether I want to hold my hand up in the air when using my mouse in the first place. That has to hurt after a few minutes.
Gyration Ultra
I wonder if it's anything like this device. Seriously though - a pointing device that works without a surface? Possibly that old thumbpad wireless mouse (which was also used primarily (AFAICR) for powerpoint presentations? Possibly a trackball?
It's been done before
its been around for what.. two years now? and its at least 5 times smaller.
But is this really any more accurate than, say, a joystick? The advantage of a mouse is that mouse movements by your hand map directly to your screen. With practice you can just move it and get very close to the desired point. A joystick like device lets you control the rate of change of pointer position, not the position directly itself. While useful for some things, for aiming my railgun or getting work done this gadget is junk.
We've been using the Gyromouse Pro from these guys for a while now. It works great and the recharging base is a plus. The only difference I can see from what we use and the new one is that the new one is optical when you use it on the desk, whereas the gyro pro still uses old ball technology.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
This device seems like it would have very limited uses. When I am using my computer for work and play I normally don't have my left hand dedicated to my mouse (like right now, I am typing with it). It is nice to just lay my hand right on top of the mouse and be ready to go. With this I would actually have to pick it up and that would take just a second longer, but it would be enough to irritate I think. Any application where you use your hand exculsivly for your mouse (or 90% of the time atleast) might be a use for this, but then there is a question of control. Do I get fine precision with this new airborne mouse? I have to think I wouldn't...but I don't honestly know.
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"hands free" operation. For instance in some warehouse implementations I've done we mounted laptop computers on fork lift equipment. First it was a pain to get the "big burly hands" to use nipples on the machine and tailed mice still had to have a place to play on. There are hand activitated computers but these cost 3X times as much as a normal PC/laptop.
Whould it not also work for presentations?
What I want is my screen focus to shift based upon eye movement. Well maybe most of the time. I don't want the wife and kid to be assilmilated!
There was a very similar device for the Atari 800. I have forgotten the exact name, but it relied on mercury (again, IIRC) switches and doubled as a joystick for playing games. It took some getting used to, but it pretty neat.
I'd hardly call this revolutionary.
On a side note, I've sold a few items *very close* to this to presentation researchers. Wireless hand-held mice that allow the professors to give power point slide shows while still being able to walk around and point at other things.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
...is a gyro mouse like this, but one that attaches to your hand.
The problem I have with this mouse is, you have to constantly pick it up and put it down when you need to use it. Granted, we have to take a hand off the keyboard to operate our current meeses, but sliding a mouse a quarter-inch across the table is somewhat less involved than picking one up, re-orienting it with the screen (after all, once you've picked it up, the cursor has moved), pointing and clicking at what you want, and finally putting it down again.
Why not a small device, mounted to the top of your wrist? When you want to point, hit a hotkey that activates the mouse, raise your hand slightly from the keyboard, point-click, hotkey, back to work. The mouse in this article seems more suited to presentations than personal computing.
If this idea gets patented in the future, can I use my slashdot post as 'prior art'?
Giving a slideshow with the mouse, and "talking with your hands" yields a deletion of your presentation...
Geeks begin to have buff right arms from holding their mouse hand up all day...
Grandmothers can no longer accurately point-and-click because of their shaking hands...
Rhythmic up and down hand motions becoming the next gesture-command to surf to persiankitty.com...
We had an earlier version of this (Gyro Mouse, same company I think).
I never really liked it. Control is not so good. I think the only place I would want one of these is for giving a presentation in a lecture hall where you need more functionality than "next slide/last slide."
We were using it in a small conference room, everyone seated around a table. Eventually we switched to a cordless trackball. Much better, in my opinion. I also use a cordless trackball when I use the computer and the TV together. (It sits on the armrest of the sofa.)
There was a 3d-input device like this out sometime ago, but it never caught on. From memory, it was simply called "the bat", but this could be a general term much the same as "mouse."
I haven't been able to find any links on google, but a gyroscope-driven bat was definately out several years ago, as I remember considering it as a cool tool for playing descent or quake games (had they come up with proper support for it). It it catches on now, it might indeed be a cool tool for 3d-gamers and developers alike.
Several years ago, Till Harbaum added a tilt sensor to his Palm Pilot. Then he wrote Mulg, which is kinda like Marble Madness; if you have the sensor, you can play by tilting the Palm to roll the marble around.
This is STILL the all-time best Palm HW hack I've ever seen.
Unfortunately (and this sounds obvious, but comes as a surprise when using it), your wrist lacks the precision that your fingers have. Circle points of reference is easy, but clicking on links is difficult.
the same applies to any cordless technology.
For instance, you have to charge your cordless phone for 9 hours before use.
your cell phone gets charged for 8 i think hours before use.
rechargable PDA's get charged a couple hours before use.
So an initial charge time of 9 hours isnt really new in the electronics market.
And besides, you do it the first night, and forget about it.
This
Next : a mouse, shaped like a dime, that you have to press against the wall with your nose?
Exactly my point to : if we consider the mouse as a complement to the keyboard as an input, then they'd have to develop an airborne Keyboard to make this practical...
It's also true that the way they shaped the mouse (on the photo) doesn't make it look it is made to walk around while working.
So, now, one will have to invent a specific usage for this...
I can imagine some Mad Quakers fighting with this but they will then risk to hurt each others while quickly balancing their mouses to frag the other before being fragged...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Better would be to start re-thinking some things more fundamentally. As you suggest, there are new degrees of freedom that could be used to enhance the interface for 3D control. The idea of 'gestures' could be very useful too, but you have to maintain compatibility both with people's familiarity with using mice, and the system and application support for mice.
I think it would be cooler if one of these could be strapped to your hand or wrist so you could still type on the keyboard without putting it down, and also access pointer functions more or less seemlessly. This needs some real hard core UI research and experimentation.
I've had a "flying mouse for over 4 years now. Made by Handykey and built into their twiddler device.
you simply press the mousing button and gesture to move the mouse.
and in fact I remember back in 1993-1994 many MANY people using nintendo powergloves as mice for windows 3.11 and Logitech had a wireless "airmouse offering back in the mid 90's.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A few weeks ago, the laptop I gave to my parents packed up (well the win98 installation gave up)... and my Dad; the definate 'luddite' who doesn't like stuff he doesn't understand, had gotten used to the laptop mousepad.
I caught him trying to use another workstation I had set up, and he was stood there moving the mouse through the air, then followed by shaking it violently (while cursing under his breath that is wasn't working) and then he found the ball at the bottom of the mouse actually moved, and started using his finger to move the ball (and cursor) around... I nearly sh*t myself from laughing. So I guess an airboune mouse might have come in handy.
I've since sorted them another workstation up, and decided a mouse might not have survived.. so I got a thumb-trackball mouse from Logitech, which is great, especially considering you don't need half the room needed for a mouse mat and movement room.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
The earlier version could work on a wire or wireless (wireless operation ate batteries, though) and was a beauty for clicking because you did it with your thumb, rather than index finger. The thumb is stronger and with it's shorter radius and good dexterity can click much more effectively without fatigue than a finger.
They also had the presentation mouse, which we put in a lecture theater about the same time.
This is merely Gyration receiving some nice press from largely ignorate media.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
My son had a hissy fit the other day and threw my cordless mouse across the room. The kid damn near took out one godawful ugly lamp. My wife would have grounded him for a month if he had broke the lamp.
I on the otherhand would have given him 20 bucks and a high-five.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
The mouse does take some getting used to if you're going to use it without a surface. Instead of using it like a normal mouse, it's designed to be held and pointed like a flashlight. Wherever the "flashlight" would shine on the screen, that's where the mouse goes. I must admit, this isn't really practical for most uses outside of things like presentations and such. The best part about these mice isn't the gyroscope feature, it's the wireless range. The model I purchaced is supposed to have a 25ft range, but in practice the real range is closer to 35ft. There's also a 50ft model that's significantly more expensive. These things are great for home theatre PCs. It's really difficult to find an RF wireless mouse and keyboard with a range greater than 6ft.
Funny this should come up; I was just reading RFC 1 this morning (read it; it's cool), and they mentioned the Lincoln Wand. "What's that?!", I asks myself; so I looked it up. 1966, guys.
I think this may set a new record for Slashdot missing the boat.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
And with a desktop mouse you're still taking your hand off the keyboard, onto the mouse, off the mouse, and repositioning over the keyboard. The typical use of separate input devices is your bugbear, not the mouse and whether it is hand held or deskbound. Some study revealed GUI designs which lack keyboard shortcuts and require mouse movement are far less efficient. It serves game designers well to remember this. Imagine grabbing a joystick, then leaping to the keyboard, then back to the joystick again. Same problem.
hen there is the issue of whether I want to hold my hand up in the air when using my mouse in the first place. That has to hurt after a few minutes.
Movement can be adjusted for very small arcs to very large arcs. When I had a Gyromouse I could rest my hand on the desk and just lightly move it around, or rest in on my thigh if I wasn't needing keyboard. It was far more relaxing, easier to use and responsive, when I had a Gyromouse (and I'm going to buy another one soon) than any desktop mouse or touchpad.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I've got ya beat. I've had flying mice since I started playing Doom. ...of course the flights weren't all that long and they usually shattered upon impact.
Now that I think about it, I'd have to admit I've had a few flying keyboards too...
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
my CS professor loves to use powerpoint presentations as lectures almost as much as he likes to walk around (presumably to keep us awake...?)
he recently purchased one of these mice and initially we were all impressed -- waving his arms through the air with pp slides flying by behind him; it was like magic. pure, hardcore geeky magic.
until the batteries died. then things got frustrating: the cursor, *when* it responded, skittered around the screen like a coked up mosquito, slides would click by at random. I presume he tired of banging the confounded thing against the wall (with no effect) since he eventually retired the bugger.
now we're back in the tech stone-age: actually CLICKING the mouse. oh, the humanity.
and she was born in a bottle-rocket 1929.
Read the article, this thing has an optical eye while on a surface, and uses gyroscopes when lifted and a special button pressed.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The Gyromouse is gyro based in the air, but put it on the desk and it reverts to being an optical mouse. It needs no external sensors to detect position and it also has, in the pro version, a 30M range... It is actually a very slick pointing device , and it feels really solid in your hand.
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