Turning gadgets into their own computer mice

Carnegie Mellon researchers putting optical sensors to new use

Carnegie Mellon University researchers say that the same optical sensors found in computer mice can be used to give mouse-like capabilities to gadgets such as mobile phones and MP3 players -- but there's a twist.

The "Minput" project, funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) enables such devices to serve as their own mice by rubbing them against a flat surface, clothing or even your hand, but also enables the devices to provide input by flicking or twisting them.

"Minput turns out to be a fairly intuitive way to navigate through menus or photo galleries on a device's display without fumbling with tiny buttons or obscuring a small touchscreen with your fingers," said Chris Harrison, a third-year Ph.D. student who developed Minput with faculty adviser Scott Hudson, a professor at CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. "Because we use a pair of sensors, it can respond to a wide range of gestural commands, much like an iPhone or other multi-touch device."

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Carnegie Mellon University researchers say that the same optical sensors found in computer mice can be used to give mouse-like capabilities to gadgets such as mobile phones and MP3 players -- but there's a twist.

The "Minput" project, funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) enables such devices to serve as their own mice by rubbing them against a flat surface, clothing or even your hand, but also enables the devices to provide input by flicking or twisting them.

"Minput turns out to be a fairly intuitive way to navigate through menus or photo galleries on a device's display without fumbling with tiny buttons or obscuring a small touchscreen with your fingers," said Chris Harrison, a third-year Ph.D. student who developed Minput with faculty adviser Scott Hudson, a professor at CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. "Because we use a pair of sensors, it can respond to a wide range of gestural commands, much like an iPhone or other multi-touch device."

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Harrison recently presented a paper on Minput at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. You can watch a video demo here.

One prototype shown in the video involves mounting sensors on a TV with a 1.5-inch diagonal display. The demonstrator then manipulates images on the screen by moving the device, sometimes flicking or twisting it. Another prototype involves a digital music player.

The beauty of the system, according to Harrison, is that it relies on sensors that have already been developed and that only cost about a buck apiece. What's more, they enable actions without draining much power from the device, unlike typical vision-based interaction methods. Harrison argues that such technology could be added to smartphones and other such devices without great cost.

The general area of turning all sorts of devices into motion controllers is hot. Japanese researchers have recently revealed their latest work on software that can turn smartphones into motion controllers.)

Minput is just the latest creation from Harrison and colleagues. Another project, dubbed Skinput, was shown at Microsoft's recent research confab and involves the use of bio-acoustic sensing technology for turning the human body into an input panel of sorts.

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