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Tongue Mouse Created By Valve Engineer

A tongue-based mouse created by Valve engineer Ben Krasnow is described and demonstrated in the following video; it's an interesting concept.


(Tongue-based Mouse by Ben Krasnow, Valve engineer)

According to Krasnow, this doesn't work perfectly despite the tongue's "fine motor control" as it is difficult to smoothly achieve the 2D movement necessary to operate a system developed for a classic mouse controller.

"I think there is possible applications for swipe interfaces, carousel menus, yes/no input, etc." he writes in the video description.

Krasnow describes the practical use of the device as being an alternative to traditional keyboard and mouse set-ups.

The idea of a tongue-controlled interface has been used various times by science fiction writers. For example, in Alfred Bester's 1956 novel The Stars My Destination, he used a similar idea: a dental "switchboard" that was tongue-controlled.

He pressed hard with his tongue against his right upper first molar. The operation that had transformed half his body into an electronic machine, had located the control switchboard in his teeth. Foyle pressed a tooth with his tongue and the peripheral cells of his retina were excited into emitting a soft light...
(Read more about Bester's dental switchboard)

I wonder if Krasnow is aware of the work done by Niven and Lerner on the related idea of tongueprint verification?

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Via Polygon; thanks to an anonymous reader for contributing this item.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 12/8/2013)

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