Development of a 1-D device is exactly what is in progress by a group in Cambridge. I was involved in the early stages of the project and we popped over to Stephen Hawking's office to see what his setup is capable of. Hawking is extremely good with his device, he has very fine temporal control with his button clicks. Basically common words/letters are highlighted by a moving bar and a click selects. It's basic, it's slow, but it works.
The new idea, known as `dasher', reverses text compression (arithmetic coding with a language modeller). The user input, in the form of clicks, mouse movement or even eye-tracking, effectively enters compressed information which is expanded into text. Very efficient, and speeds can be up to 40wpm or so.
It could probably be used effectively as input for PDAs, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Development of a 1-D device is exactly what is in progress by a group in Cambridge. I was involved in the early stages of the project and we popped over to Stephen Hawking's office to see what his setup is capable of. Hawking is extremely good with his device, he has very fine temporal control with his button clicks. Basically common words/letters are highlighted by a moving bar and a click selects. It's basic, it's slow, but it works.
The new idea, known as `dasher', reverses text compression (arithmetic coding with a language modeller). The user input, in the form of clicks, mouse movement or even eye-tracking, effectively enters compressed information which is expanded into text. Very efficient, and speeds can be up to 40wpm or so.
It could probably be used effectively as input for PDAs, too.
Check out http://wol.ra.phy.cam.ac.uk/djw30/dasher/ which also includes a demo.
Matt
Matt Davey
Oh, I can't stand scientists. Have they nothing better to do with their time