Physical mousing
From On-signal: Projects & Research
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Conceptual description
Interactively using a mouse. Having feedback from the mouse. What if we connect the mouse cursor (a virtual something) to something physical.
For example to a remote controlled car. So where the cursor moves on the screen, the car will also go (in a physical space). So the has a space which correlates to the space the cursor has on the screen.
From here taking a next step. Making the virtual/physical connection work like the following; when the car encouters an obstacle and can't go somewhere, the mouse cursor is restricted and also cannot move to the corresponding place on the screen. So the mouse has to make the correct path for the car to go around the physical object.
Thinking of this, another step could be to make a 'physical'cursor. Meaning, a 'real' space where a person (=cursor) can walk around in. The real space correlates to the virtual space (screen). To make a mouse click, the person should jump. To double click, of coarse the person should jump twice (quickly). In this situation, if the person encounters an obstacle, he/she will have to move around it in order to 'get' somewhere in the virtual space.
Technical description
This last part of the concept could work by using the wii controller as an 'position' sensor for the person walking around and also as a sensor for the mouseclick (=jump). Like this we create a 'life' mouse cursor.. and we have to physical move in a real space to 'compute' on screen (virtual).
There have been a lot of people working with concepts for forced feedback mouses, but i havent seen anything on 'virtual/real mouse cursors'... (for example [1]http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6292174.html
Johnny Chung Lee is a famous wii 'researcher' and done some nice projects with the wii already. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/
Check him, kinda cool and low-tec/high-tec.. Brings me to the idea of makin'; a 2 point detection for the 'physical cursor' so the virtual cursor will also point into the same direction as the 'cursor'person will do.. The biggest 'problem' would be how to physical click... Maybe having 2 wii controllers (meaning 2 infrared cams) would be a sollution..
Work in Progress
Well, while working on this we encountered some minor issues.. but for our goal we need to be able to track the IR source over a distance of 6 to 8 meters.. Therefor we need to have a high power IR source. So we now going to experiment with some different type LED's and also experiment with bundling a couple of LED's. We also found out that we can track the 'normal light bulbes' with the wii-mote. This maybe could be interesting for future projects.
We have ordered IR leds on http://www.leds-buy.nl/ and found out they were very cheap; 10 times cheaper than in a regular store. Having done some preliminary studies we now focus on making 2 led 'beacons' which will be attached to someones shoulders. These beacons radiate in every direction, and thus the wiimotes will be able to pick up this signal. The distance will not be a problem if we use many leds; 30 pieces on a 18v source should do the trick.
First test results
[oh my god, it really works :-) ]
Today (02/03/2008), we build a setup with to wiimotes and 2 IR-LED sources (each build of 5 IR LEDs and 1 normal LED). 5 IR LEDs are powerful enough to get readings over 6 meters.
This test setup is placed in a horizontal plane, but the 'real' setup is supposed to be in a vertical plane.. that's the next step from here. Only thing is to find a suitable space for it..
Second run, vertical setup
Software
The software is also in place. Screenshot will follow soon. The program, written in C# using the WiimoteLib library, is able to control 2 wiimotes, one for the cursor location and the other one for the click detection. The program allows for adjusting the sensitive areas of both wiimotes.
Interfaces
The next step now is, how to make a nice presentation for this concept. Using a physical mouse just as a, well, mouse, is nice to see but quite impractical. For the presentation of IVAN we want to make.
Two ways of interactively walking through a 'map' of your presentation:
- http://www.on-signal.org/data/mapping/maptest2.html
- http://www.on-signal.org/data/mapping/maptest.html
About IVAN:
