Microsoft continues their quest to bring Minority Report to life with a recently published patent for a wearable mouse from 2006. Now you too can wave your hands around like Tom Cruise—jumping optional—to control the cursor on your computer screen. The mouse is placed around the palm and activated by making a fist. The cursor moves based on a gyroscope inside which tracks the X and Y coordinates of your hand, much like a Wiimote. The handheld style opens our eyes to some interesting possibilities.
The “Minority Report” interface is a popular one to namecheck recently. The latest company to do so is the Swiss outfit Atracsys, whose interactive system, dubiously dubbed “beMerlin,” optically (surprise) tracks hand movements and promises to deliver the same intuitive awesomeness Tom Cruise experienced, minus the awesome gloves.
But the demo video on their site so far mostly shows off stuff we’ve seen touch/surface computers do before: move stuff around in really slick ways.
That said, the fact that you don’t actually have to put your fingers on anything is a slight twist, and if done correctly, could be more intuitive than having to leave actual smudge marks on glass. Or it might just come down to whether or not you’re a hands- on type of person.
beMerlin [Atracsys]
