A team from MIT's Media Lab needed only a few dollars to create their latest invention - an invisible computer mouse.
Researchers Pranav Mistry, Pattie Maes and Liyan Chang used an infrared laser beam and infrared tracking camera to develop a system that reads the movement of a user's hand and then translates it onto the display in form of a cursor.
It is worth mentioning that the laser beam's plane is aimed slightly above the surface of the user area and after the user's hand takes the form as if it is holding a computer mouse, the beam breaks at the points where each finger comes into contact with the surface.
Afterwards the infrared tracking camera registers the movements of the hand and interprets them accordingly. The camera can identify such actions as clicking and double-clicking.
Currently the team is working on improving the tracking and identification algorithms in their latest invention in order to obtain a large list of different commands, which could lead in the future to multi-touch gesturing.
The developers claim that their system has cost $20. Check out the video below to see how the system works.
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