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Wireless Keyboard... Without The Keyboard
MindJob writes "Berkeley's Sensor & Actuator Center has developed a virtual keyboard that allows you to glue 10 tiny chips to your fingernails and type away anywhere. The chips are composed of tiny, battery powered MEMS, or Microelectromechanical Systems, that work by tracking the location of your fingers and transmitting via a low-powered radio to a nearby receiver that will work regardless of the computer platform."
Here's an idea. With the advent of Organic LED's how about a HUD or even a pair of glasses that you can see through clear as day but when you look down you see a virtual keyboard. Maybe something like sensors in your hands that activate when placed together to create the virtual location of the keyboard. That way if you want to move the keyboard you just "click you heals together" actually your thumbs or the like and the keyboard moves to that location. With that us H&P's can still use the keyboard and the pro typist can go about it the blind way. jackel@~spam~jackels-den.net~sucks~
Low powered radio? Won't this cause a nice broadcast of your keystrokes (passwords, credit card details, personal emails) to whoever would like to decode them? It may be low powered and Im not sure on the range, but surely this is an issue?
It think this might be what he was talking about.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
No more drumming my fingers on the table when I am thinking!
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Imagine being able to use this device and a Bluetooth-enabled PalmOS device to enter data. Could be better than the Stowaway. Bluetooth would also solve some of the security problems mentioned by someone else.
Just think of this as a cordless data entry device for a hidden PC - combine with a virtual display and you'd have an invisible computer system that could be used walking down the street...
Similar though the ones I've played with were all homemade (I designed, someone else wired em.) or in books. The ones we had were meant to leave the hands totally usable for real world tasks. so they were simply slightly sticky straps across the back of the hand w/ loops around the base of each finger to help keep them in place. They had a sensor just behind the knuckle of each finger and had a small bundle of data wires that ran to a little wrist band gadget that had a mini processing circuit and a transmitter on it. The wrist unit was also supposed to track wrist motion but we never got that far. It worked pretty well considering the price and the fact a couple of clueless halfwits were making it. Main problem we had was keeping the damn thing calibrated as the sensors tended to slip around a little and we had to calibrate it for each individual user since it had problems working w/ people of different hand sizes. It also didn't work very well on people w/ fleshy hands. It worked very well on my hands which happen to be very thin and boney which seemed to make tracking movements easier. The software used a sort of wireframe of the hand to use the map the sensor data to the VR equiv since we only had sensor data from that one point instead of at each joint which meant it took a lot more work to figure things out but it did seem to be possible on most people to calculate each joint position just from that one sensor per finger. Never tried it on a full 3D model, just wireframes on my old 486 but it seemed to be pretty fun anyway. Considering the things only cost us about $40 per hand to make I'm surprised we haven't seen any similar products sold from joystick companies or something. It'd be perfect for games. Really it was so light weight you barely noticed it was there. No more than the average watch.
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
If you could track the motions of a virtual keyboard...then why wouldn't you just be able to "remove" your hand from the keyboard and use a mouse. Use your fingers like you would use a trackball, and a simple "grip" or tap of the fingers or hand will result in a click or double click, it might require some training but, it will vastly increase desktop space!
For those of you who are thinking about speech as the interface of the future, doubtless you are correct for some cases. However, there will always be a place for precision work. Think about CAD programs. Can you imagine just speaking to them and getting the accuracy you need? Plus, until we have programming languages that are redesigned not to use punctuation that need be spoken, you'll be able to enter your code much easily with a keyboard.
Thinking of what you can do with your eyes constantly switching between screen and keyboard, think now what you could do if you could leave your brain in the virtual world displayed on the screen and never have to look down.
Can I put all 10 chips on one finger for my H&P typing?
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Typing in the air has no frames of reference (unless you have some VR keyboard and goggles etc) and it's a 3-d sort of thing - no hard 2-d thing to stop your fingers at the end of very stroke.
Instead I suspect it's probably getting close to the time when we can come up with a new typing metaphor - hopefully something a little easier on my wrists - maybe 'typing' with my arms relaxed in my lap or something. With something like this a form of virtual chord keyboard might work well too meaning we could get away from the positional locations of keys on a keyboard which might be more suited for virtual keyboards.
Has anyone out there become proficient with a chord keyboard of some sort? can you type as fast or are you limited more by the time between chords?
Of course with cool MEMS technology like this just think of the interesting musical instruments we can create!
We have a pair of these in our lab hooked up to one of our SGIs. Pretty nifty toys, actually did a bit of programming for them (nothing too fancy). The API is fairly easy to mess with. :) :)
There's nothing like flipping someone off and watching a real-time rendered hand do it on your monitor....
You can even get them with little vibrators on the tip of each finger and on the palm to give a sort of tactile feedback. You can program these to react any way you like. The most useful way is to increase the intensity of the vibration the harder you grip or press against a virtual object.
Don't get any sick ideas...
Can't sleep...Clown will eat me...
I wear pants.
Imagine the implications for the handicapped
Users of sign language could now have realtime translations... the chips would automatically detect the hand configuration and send it to a PC screen... maybe this would make sign language the new language of pc 's? Or a form of it. Consider all the different configurations anf combinations of hand movements and contortions... enough to equal a 101keyboard plus extras for shortcuts and such... but would this rate as ergonomic? And would it can a whole new for of RSI??
Ace Mccoy 'That Which does not Kill you makes you stronger' -Anonymous Sadist-
Why bother about keyboards. Deaf people's sign language, and in particular the `hand alphabeth' seem to me tailormade for this application.
If the patern-recognition software is so good it can make out which key you think you are pressing, making out what sign your hand is making by the relative position of the fingertips should be just as easy.
(Altogether now ....)
"I'm not entirely sure that I want my computer knowing where my fingers are at all times"
Yes yes yes, sorry, and all that. I resisted the temptation to say that for at least a minute. Hate me.
jsm
Is it just me? I only use 3-5 of my fingers to type, and although I don't do it consciously, I do need to peek at the keys from time to time to physically hit the keys I think I'm hitting. I still manage about 30 wpm like this plus I can type just as well with one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard. For this to work for crappy typists like myself, there would need to be a heads up display or VR goggles to provide a visual keyboard and it would have to allow any finger to hit any key, which I don't think this would allow.
I can see these sensors being useful for short periods (perhaps in combination with small hand-held devices such as the palm pilot), but I don't see that they stand much chance of replacing the keyboard.
Firstly, one of the most important things when buying a keyboard is the feel of the keys- people's preferences vary here- personally, I like a "clicky" keyboard (like the Cherry range) rather than the membrane types.
Having no feedback at all would be very disconcerting. I don't quite understand how anyone but a perfect touch typist would know precisely where the keys were without any form of real keyboard, either. The bumps and ridges of the keys are essential to me in finding the right keys- typing on a desk would bound to be a little random.
And how long would it take to apply the sensors and calibrate them each time? It would be best if they were permanently fitted in such a way that they didn't interfere with other things we might want to do with our hands- about the only sensible location is under the fingernails, but unless there is a significant change in fashion, this eliminates at least 50% of the market.
I would have thought that sensors such as these might have a more useful application as part of a virtual reality "glove" or suchlike.
--
jtjm
I cant find the article, anyone has a Link?
./ article. Implanting them would be a solution, only then it is quite difficult to switch them off ... ;) BTW, Typing on an invisible Keyboard without any feedback from the Keys sounds difficult. Personaly I would at last need the layout to be printed on the surface, better add a few structures to it so I can still type without looking down, so simlating a Keyboard with it isn't too attractive (for me). But it would be nice for recognising gestrues. Windows Bluescreen? Now, I think *everyone* can think about a gesture that would be perfectly suited to reboot the computer in that case, can't you? This would have quite some interesting applications and I think there are other projects about that. I remember one that was designed to recognize gesture language using cameras. Of course you need to track more that just the Fingers (which would require a very high resolution camers). Maybe a combination would be useful.
;)
Anyway, these don't sound too practical. A Keyboard is just there laying in front of the computer. If I want to type something, I just do it. For those sensors I *always* have to put them on, that sounds way to cumbersome just to type a few words on the computer to answer an email or post a
Hmmm, one camera focused to the Face, one (or two for some Kind of 3D) on the whole Body and these things on the Fingers and you put the action back into interaction
Ciao, Peter
Yeah, but what kind of idiots will we look like with our hands in front of our faces moving about rapidly like we are wizards casting spells? Hmm, actually I think I like that analogy: we ARE wizards anyway, so we might as well look like wizards. Ok, at this moment I copyright and patent all Wizard technology, so if I see you waving your hands around like a wizard, I'll cast my magic spell and rain you with a blizzard of lawyers!
If it is combined with cellulars, palms or even notebook computers where the main problem with the size is the keyboard, it would be somewhat useful.
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People keep saying that they've already invented this, which I don't doubt. I had a pretty neat idea along these lines a while ago, too. Plus, there was the Dilbert strip (which people have mentioned), and there was another almost identical gadget in a recent Flash comic. The only difference here is that someone actually built it this time. We should realise that if we see an fingernail scrubber that powered by egg shells, odds are that the guy down the street had a dream about it once. I don't mean to offend anyone who claims that this was their idea, I'm just saying that it's kind of pointless to mention.