Yeah, you read that right. This’ll let you move the cursor around using your hand and controlled by movements that you’d normally perform as if you were holding a mouse. On a desk beside your computer, where you’d normally place your mouse. Thing is, you won’t actually be holding anything. It’s legit too—seriously, it’s not just an interesting party trick that simulates crazy
Here’s the basic description:
Mouseless is an invisible computer mouse that provides the familiarity of interaction of a physical mouse without actually needing a real hardware mouse.
And the explanation:
Mouseless consists of an Infrared (IR) laser beam (with line cap) and an Infrared camera. Both IR laser and IR camera are embedded in the computer. The laser beam module is modified with a line cap and placed such that it creates a plane of IR laser just above the surface the computer sits on. The user cups their hand, as if a physical mouse was present underneath, and the laser beam lights up the hand which is in contact with the surface. The IR camera detects those bright IR blobs using computer vision. The change in the position and arrangements of these blobs are interpreted as mouse cursor movement and mouse clicks. As the user moves their hand the cursor on screen moves accordingly. When the user taps their index finger, the size of the blob changes and the camera recognizes the intended mouse click.
Never mind the fact that the $20 prototype shows more hardware and cables than what you’d have if you just bought a regular mouse and that the video demo shows a considerable amount of delay: it’s still pretty cool.
According to the site, they’re working to add more gestures to give you at least more functionality than what you’d get on a cheap mouse.
Tags: Computer Peripherals, Inventions, Mouse, Mouseless, Prototypes
So it’s basically Kinect: Mouse edition? lol