Mouse May be Replaced by "Nouse"

mteichrob writes "A Canadian inventor has designed a computer mouse steered by movements of the nose and eyelids. The invention, dubbed a "Nouse," is meant to help people with a disability use a computer. I think this could also be quite useful for the average office lackey like me! As good as my ergonomic mouse/keyboard combo is, less body movement is still a better replacement."

Comments

Eying your way around the desktop

[ackthpt]

I thought they already had something like this that followed your eye movements.

"The technology that watches you watching IT"

Department of Homeland Security Approved

Dmitry "Nouse" Gorodnichy's Homepage

[Digital_Quartz]

You can find Dmitry (the inventor's) webpage here. Lots of interesting stuff, including some interesting facial recognition and tracking work.

Re:Questions

[LnxAddct]

This is nothing new. Alternatives to the physical hardware with which we interact with our computers has been researched for years. I haven't rtfa, but I'm going to assume that the nose is tracked and associated with the mouse, and two blinks == one click, and three blinks == double click. I did this over two years ago, and I know alot of others who have too, just go to any university. Anyway, tracking the nose is good, but I found tracking your irises(is that even a word) easier and significantly more accurate. I found it easier because you are already focusing on that area for blinks, you already know where the eyes are so there is no need to go searching for other features. Also, the eyes stick out significantly more than a nose, and depending on the lighting, a nose can be very hard to detect because it is skin and blends with your face. I found using the eyes for mouse movement more accurate because you have redundancy, instead of hoping that you found the nose (which you only have one of) and then hoping that you tracked it right, using the eyes you can double check all your answers to a certain precision (doesn't work with a "dead" eye). Also, the iris is clearly defined and surrounded by white in all people. Using the nose, or mouth, for tracking was awkward because as you move your nose up or down you have to move your eyes opposite of that direction to stay focused on the mouse. When you use your eyes, they naturally are pointing where ever the mouse is, and thats most likely your intended area of focus. One final note, as this is getting long, some people may be wondering why 2 blinks = 1 click, etc... Well at first I did have 1 blink == 1 click and 2 blinks == 2 clicks. Debugging this was hell! It drove me literally insane. My mouse kept clicking when it wasn't supposed to and I had no idea why. Then after quite a while of damn near mathematically proving my code to be correct, I realized it was me inadvertenly blinking! Now your thinking, "Duh!", but when its late at night and your on a roll coding and testing, you dont really pay attention to when you blink, I mean we blink all day long and never realize it. So inorder to effectivly click with the eyes, you need to add an extra blink. Just my 2 cents. Oh yea, I also am unfortunately no longer working on that project(I was going to release it on sf.net or something) but around the same time I migrated entirely to linux and my damn Creative Camera didn't have drivers. I'm still waiting to get a logitech cam, any recommendations?
Regards,
Steve
p.s. I forgot to mention that tracking the nose is useful for one application that me and friends found, if you make a triangle with your nose and eyes then you can get a pretty good idea of the orientation of someone's head in relation to 3 dimensional space. Using the eyes isn't very useful for more then 2 dimensions.