Project Advisor: Olivier St-Cyr, PhD, LEL
Summary
Repetitive strain injuries (RSIs) are a common affliction among heavy computer users. RSIs can severely limit an individual’s capability to use a computer, and, hence, negatively impact his or her ability to continue working. Speech recognition is a well-known substitute for keyboard input, but there is no well-known analogue for mouse replacement.Many mouse replacements have been developed for the disabled, but performance demands are lower, because the focus is on enabling people to perform new tasks, rather than maintaining a level of productivity for familiar tasks. The proposed study would produce an inexpensive, novel camera based mouse replacement and compare it with existing camera based implementations of mouse replacements. The proposed device would consist of a WebCam attached to a helmet, hat or headband. Unlike previous work, where a camera attached to a display is used to track the user’s face, or some distinct feature, the proposed device is attached to the user and points at a stationary target, such as a black shape positioned above a computer monitor on a wall.
Goal
Experiments will be performed to answer the question of which mouse replacement allows a user to accomplish tasks most quickly and accurately, among those that can be implemented inexpensively, at home. The mouse implementations to be evaluated will include at least: a traditional mouse,the proposed device, several publicly available implementations of facial feature tracking.
Authors and Contributors
Trevor Brown trbot86@gmail.com
Vandana Saini (@vandsaini) vsaini@cs.toronto.edu
Europa Shang europaray@gmail.com