mouse

We introduce an inexpensive position input device called the FieldMouse, with which a computer can tell the position of the device on paper or any flat surface without using special input tablets or position detection devices. A FieldMouse is a combination of an ID recognizer like a barcode reader and a mouse which detects relative movement of the device. Using a FieldMouse, a user first detects an ID on paper by using the barcode reader, and then drags it from the ID using the mouse. If the location of the ID is known, the location of the dragged FieldMouse can also be calculated by adding the amount of movement from the ID to the position of the FieldMouse. Using a FieldMouse in this way, any flat surface can work as a pointing device that supports absolute position input, just by putting an ID tag somewhere on the surface. A FieldMouse can also be used for enabling a graphical user interface (GUI) on paper or on any flat surface by analyzing the direction and the amount of mouse movement after detecting an ID. In this paper, we introduce how a FieldMouse can be used in various situations to enable computing in real-world environments.

We present a range of novel interactions enabled by a simple modification in the design of a computer mouse. By converting each mouse button to pop through tactile push-buttons, similar to the focus/shutter-release buttons used in many cameras, users can feel, and the computer can sense, two distinct "clicks" corresponding to pressing lightly and pressing firmly to pop through. Despite the prototypical status of our hardware and software implementations, our current pop through mouse interactions are compelling and warrant further investigation. In particular, we demonstrate that pop through buttons not only yield an additional button activation state that is composable with, or even preferable to, techniques such as double-clicking, but also can endow a qualitatively novel user experience when meaningfully and consistently applied. We propose a number of software guidelines that may provide a consistent, systemic benefit; for example, light pressure may invoke default interaction (short menu), and firm pressure may supply more detail (long menu).

This paper details the design and evaluation of the Delphian Desktop, a mechanism for online spatial prediction of cursor movements in a Windows-Icons-Menus-Pointers (WIMP) environment. Interaction with WIMP-based interfaces often becomes a spatially challenging task when the physical interaction mediators are the common mouse and a high resolution, physically large display screen. These spatial challenges are especially evident in overly crowded Windows desktops. The Delphian Desktop integrates simple yet effective predictive spatial tracking and selection paradigms into ordinary WIMP environments in order to simplify and ease pointing tasks. Predictions are calculated by tracking cursor movements and estimating spatial intentions using a computationally inexpensive online algorithm based on estimating the movement direction and peak velocity. In testing the Delphian Desktop effectively shortened pointing time to faraway icons, and reduced the overall physical distance the mouse (and user hand) had to mechanically traverse.

Soap is a pointing device based on hardware found in a mouse, yet works in mid-air. Soap consists of an optical sensor device moving freely inside a hull made of fabric. As the user applies pressure from the outside, the optical sensor moves independent from the hull. The optical sensor perceives this relative motion and reports it as position input. Soap offers many of the benefits of optical mice, such as high-accuracy sensing. We describe the design of a soap prototype and report our experiences with four application scenarios, including a wall display, Windows Media Center, slide presentation, and interactive video games.

A common task in graphical user interfaces is controlling onscreen elements using a pointer. Current adaptive pointing techniques require applications to be built using accessibility libraries that reveal information about interactive targets, and most do not handle path/menu navigation. We present a pseudo-haptic technique that is OS and application independent, and can handle both dragging and clicking. We do this by associating a small force with each past click or drag. When a user frequently clicks in the same general area (e.g., on a button), the patina of past clicks naturally creates a pseudo-haptic magnetic field with an effect similar to that ofsnapping or sticky icons. Our contribution is a bottom-up approach to make targets easier to select without requiring prior knowledge of them.

The first requirement of a "spatial mouse" is the ability to identify the object that it is aiming at. Among many possible technologies that can be employed for this purpose, possibly the best solution would be object recognition by machine vision. The problem, however, is that object recognition algorithms are not yet reliable enough or light enough for hand-held devices. This paper demonstrates that a simple object recognition algorithm can become a practical solution when augmented by interactivity. The user draw a circle around a target using a spatial mouse, and the mouse captures a series of camera frames. The frames can be easily stitched together to give a target image separated from the background, with which we need only additional steps of feature extraction and object classification. We present here results from two experiments with a few household objects.