Mouseless is an invisible computer mouse that provides the familiarity of interaction of a physical mouse without actually needing a real hardware mouse.
A group of scientists working with the Fluid Interfaces Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Cambridge Massachusetts, were interested in removing the requirement for a physical mouse, while still allowing computer users to interact with their computers in a way with which they were familiar.
The researchers, Pranav Mistry, Liyan Chang, and Pattie Maes, developed an infrared (IR) laser beam and associated camera that could be incorporated into the computer so that a plane of IR laser would be created just above the surface on which the computer is resting. The user acts as though a physical mouse were present and the laser beam is intersected by the hand, and parts of the hand are shown up as bright spots of light that change position as the hand moves. The built-in camera then interprets the changes in position of the hand and fingers and translates them as moves of the mouse and clicks on the two buttons, and the cursor on the screen moves as if the user was operating a physical mouse.
A group of scientists working with the Fluid Interfaces Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Cambridge Massachusetts, were interested in removing the requirement for a physical mouse, while still allowing computer users to interact with their computers in a way with which they were familiar.
The researchers, Pranav Mistry, Liyan Chang, and Pattie Maes, developed an infrared (IR) laser beam and associated camera that could be incorporated into the computer so that a plane of IR laser would be created just above the surface on which the computer is resting. The user acts as though a physical mouse were present and the laser beam is intersected by the hand, and parts of the hand are shown up as bright spots of light that change position as the hand moves. The built-in camera then interprets the changes in position of the hand and fingers and translates them as moves of the mouse and clicks on the two buttons, and the cursor on the screen moves as if the user was operating a physical mouse.
