Last weekend, I've been to the Cleveland Orchestra concert at the Carnegie Hall. In the concert, German bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff performed three concert arias composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Quasthoff was born with serious birth defects. He stands four feet tall, has vestigial arms, his hands extending below his shoulders; however, he has great voice and passion.
While he was hardly turning the page of music score, I thought about this project; a computer mouse for Thomas Quasthoff or similar people who can't use ordinary mouse.
I've applied serial communications to this project; combined the Arduino and the Processing using photo cell sensor and flexible sensor. I made prototype of the mouse.
(4 photo cell sensors for detecting the movement of fingers and move the cursor, flexible sensor detect the mouse press)
(demo)
(front view)
However, there were several problems.
1. A finger makes shadow which will affect photo cell sensors.
2. It is hard to detect the movement because of the brightness of the room.
3. I can put 4 more sensors to detect diagnol movement, but not enough Analog input pins.
I think I can use another sensor(ex. distance sensors) for this project that solve those problems. |
