Mouseless: Now That’S Magical and Revolutionary

Pranav Mistry loves creating new ways of using and interacting with computers – he was the one who created SixthSense, a portable interface which projects interactive images, not only intuitive and practical but cool as hell to use. Now he and colleagues Patti Maes and Liyan Chang have come up with Mouseless, a substitute for the mouse that – surprise – doesn’t use a mouse at all.

Using an IR laser, an IR camera and specialized software, Mouseless is able to interpret hand and finger movements. Basically, the laser illuminates parts of the hand that are touching the surface of the table. The camera tracks those illuminated parts, and the software sorts out what kind of commands are being sent, from simple movement to clicks to multi-touch gestures.