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Microsoft's hardware research team recently unveiled five mouse prototypes aimed at taking advantage of multi-touch computing. One concept dubbed the Orb Mouse, for example, comes equipped with an internal camera to recognize finger gestures across its hemispherical surface. In contrast, the Side Mouse requires minimal contact with the user's hand and instead uses the company's proprietary SideSight technology to detect finger and hand movements around the device.
The most bizarre-looking of the bunch, the Arty Mouse, uses three optical mouse sensors to track movements of the wrist, thumb and index finger independently, allowing the manipulation of 3D objects on screen. You can catch an 8-minute video after the jump to get a better idea of how each mouse works.
Needless to say these are all still in prototype stage and there are no plans of commercializing the designs anytime soon. Most of them are probably not even fit for everyday use, but multi-touch technology in mice could hold promise under certain scenarios.
User Comments: 3
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I must say, some of those are really cool, but nothing quite revolutionary. The first one is my favorite cause it has the regular mouse functions with some new ideas like the iTouch like movements and some new thumb buttons. I'd imagine it would be a pain in the butt to hot key everything the way you like though. =)
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¼ of a hotdog said:
Looks like those mice would be good for 3d modeling and animation.
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Those mice look neat. I like the designs, but they look like they do a better job with multi-touch than they do for pointing. I'm also a little worried about the longevity of those mice - what sort of failure rate will they have? And the lack of a mechanical button might be an issue for drag-n-drop situations.
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