Tired of holding a mouse and not a fan of your laptop’s touchpad? Here’s an alternate solution: the evoMouse.
Created by Korea-based Celluon, the device sits still on your desk while projecting a virtual touchpad on it, similar to the Laser Virtual Keyboard from a couple years ago. You then perform your navigation right on the desk, moving your fingers according to predefined gesture controls, which the device will track (using its two cute button eyes) and translate into actions on your computer.
The evoMouse is clad as an intentionally-cute, animal-shaped contraption, complete with four legs (you know, so it won’t be out of place in your toy-infested workstation). Size appears no bigger than a regular mouse peripheral, so you can take it along with your laptop while you work on the road. It can interface with your computer both via USB and Bluetooth, with the USB option charging its built-in battery at the same time.
The command set sounds enticing: you get click, double click, right click, drag, pinch-to-zoom and rotate. There’s also support for stylus motion, so you can use it as a drawing tablet, as well as built-in handwriting recognition. All in all, it is quite complete in the features department. Hopefully, the execution will be accurate (that’s the real rub here).
According to Celluon, the evoMouse can be used with PCs running Windows XP, Vista or 7, as well as with Blackberry and Symbian smartphones. Pricing and availability are still TBA — hopefully, they’ll roll this out before all the devs get cracking on their Kinect applications (I imagine some of those apps will infringe on what this thing does).
[Celluon]