Humble 'Mouse's days numbered

The humble mouse’s days may be limited – with many new technologies aiming to replace the household item found in countless homes and offices around the world.

Created back in the 1960s by Douglas Engelbart, it was Bill English who invented the ball mouse which became such a common sight. Today’s mouse is likely to be optical, using a laser or LED to sense movement on a surface and do away with the moving parts which tended to get clogged up on the earlier devices.

However, as people look for new and more novel input devices, it may be that the mouse finds itself relegated to a relic of the computer past – with motion sensor devices and optical technology now beginning to gain the sophistication needed to become widely adopted.

Most prevalent in the news at the moment are the motion detector technologies, working in a number of ways; one of the most common is to use a camera that tracks movement – normally in conjunction with target spots on the gloves or body, but there are also sensors that can be worn that track actual movement as it occurs. Both methods can be programmed to read gestures so that, for instance, a movement of two hands apart could stretch an image or enlarge a window.

The upside of this technology is that it is inherently intuitive for people to use gestures to control things. We grow up with gestures and the familiarity of the techniques play a large part in the continued interest in this technology.

There are drawbacks, however, with large movements becoming very tiring.