I wanted to test the idea of using the
tongue to control a computer. The most obvious way would be to map x/y
coordinates in a Windows-style UI with tongue movements constrained to a plane.
This doesn't work terribly well, as even though the tongue has fine motor
control, it's very difficult to smoothy achieve the 2D movements needed to
operate a system that has been developed around a classic mouse. I think there
is possible applications for swipe interfaces, carousel menus, yes/no input,
etc.
hey guys I've got
another unusual game
controller for you this is a mouse that
you control with the tip of your tongue
so it's got a plastic sort of retainer
kind of housing that sticks up to the
top of the roof of the mouth and then
moving the tongue across the sensor is
just like moving your finger across the
sensor of an optical mouse so like this
let me tell you about the details
I built this mouse by taking apart a
trackball and in the trackball there was
like a separate circuit board that
housed the actual optical sensor and a
short ribbon cable that went from that
board to this main board and what I did
is basically just put a longer piece of
wire in there so it's got the same
optical sensor as the original trackball
had and this is the USB cable leaving
from here going to the computer the one
thing that I did change that's kind of
interesting is that the light in the
original device was red or actually you
think whose infrared and I changed it to
green because the red or infrared
illumination was absorbed too easily
into the tongue so to get good contrast
on things moving on the surface I
switched to green light also I added a
little bit of plastic on top of this
optical assembly so that if you put
something flush on here and move it
across the focal plane of the optical
sensor is set up to be right at the
surface of this plastic otherwise with
most optical mice there's error between
the mousepad surface and the top of the
lens or the bottom of the lens so if you
just pushed your finger down into an
optical sensor you'd be passed the focal
point you'd be too close and no movement
would be detected this hack is mostly
just to test the idea of using a cursor
with the tongue and so I added a little
button here just for you know just
because it's so easy to do it but really
I'm mostly interested in figuring out
what kind of precision you can actually
get by moving your tongue and what I
found out is that for precise XY
movements like cursor control on the
screen this is probably not going to
work you just don't have quite the level
of precision needed
that you do with like hands and fingers
to do precise pointing however what
might work pretty well is to do swiping
type movements so on a UI specifically
designed for swiping up and down or left
and right you could probably pretty
reliably and effectively and easily do
that with the tongue and you wouldn't
really need super-high XY positioning
that like you would need for a Windows
type interface the wire is pretty
intrusive and so I also did a quick
experiment with this which is a wireless
mouse this is a little ring mouse made
by a company called genius and the idea
was that you would you know put it on
your finger like this and it had a I had
an optical window over here that you
could slide your finger across so what I
did is take all that apart and
unfortunately I'm missing the lens now
but I put all this into a sealed bag
it's even got the lipo battery and
everything on there and inside the bag I
put a lens glued on to it so that this
whole thing could go into the mouth
inside this thermoplastic a retainer so
as you can see just doing normal tasks
in a Windows type environment is quite
difficult with this mouse I'm showing
you this image of the screen being
controlled in real time so you can see
how much difficulty I'm actually having
controlling the icons one additional
difficulty is that the trackball X and
y-axis did not map to the x and y sort
of layout of the mouse so if you think
side-to-side just because of the shape
of this sensor turns out that
side-to-side ended up being fore-and-aft
in the mouth so I'm using a program
called autohotkey to swap the x and y
axes of the mouse input here's some
footage of me playing an FPS game with
using boss D to move around but not
using the mouse at all for Direction
control and it would be basically pretty
much impossible to play this way the
precision needed for aiming and shooting
at targets in a game like this is just
far more than you can really do but like
I say for for swiping and
sort of gross movements like you might
use with like a hat switch or something
on a joystick there could be some
possibilities there one reason why you
might go to the extremes of using a
mouse you know a tongue controller
basically is for environments where you
don't have a keyboard or mouse or even
that you're sitting somewhere that you
can use a computer like that so we might
think of applications like augmented
reality or Google glass type things
where you want to have some sort of
computer control but you really don't
want to burden your hands with doing
anything using some other part of your
body that's not you know necessary to
move around the world I mean you but you
kind of want to be opening doors and
things like that without interfering
with your ability to interact with the
computer and if all you get is swipes
out of your tongue that still might be
kind of a win okay see you next time bye
s
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