|
|
Try the Universal Gesture Mouse for FREE! |
What is the Universal Gesture Mouse?
Alces' Universal Gesture Mouse is a new way to control your Windows 7 PC using the Kinect for Windows sensor. Its a lightweight application that complements the traditional mouse, keyboard, or touchscreen to control your cursor with intuitive and easy-to-use hand gestures. The Universal Gesture Mouse will work with nearly any Windows 7 program to create a fun and engaging experience in a wide variety of applications.
How does it work?
The Universal Gesture Mouse is built atop the Kinect for Windows platform. The Universal Gesture Mouse takes advantage of the Kinect camera technology to track the users body position, specifically the hands. A virtual trackpad is created in front of the user which maps the position of their hand in space to the position of cursor on the display. The Universal Gesture Mouse can issue left-click, click and hold, and click and drag commands via several different click modes.
What do I need to run it?
All you need to get started is a Windows 7 PC, a Kinect for Windows sensor, and the free evaluation version of the Universal Gesture Mouse software.
Who could use this?
We've designed the Universal Gesture Mouse as a tool for everyone that would like to explore new gesture and natural user interfaces. The free Evaluation Edition gives you the functionality of a gesture interface but without the need to create a custom controller, this way you can use your own content and test your own ideas faster. The Universal Gesture Mouse provides a great starting point for designers looking to spice up their user experiences, for businesses or organizations that would like to differentiate themselves or their products, or for software developers that would like to jump start their own unique applications.
The Universal Gesture Mouse can be setup and customized for a wide range of applications.
The Universal Gesture Mouse can be setup and customized for a wide range of applications.
How much does it cost?
The Evaluation Edition is free to try for non-commercial use. For commercial-use please contact Alces Technology, Inc. for licensing options and other opportunities.
How does this compare to the Leap Motion?
The Leap Motion holds great potential in the future for new natural user interfaces but the Universal Gesture Mouse is available now for everyone to try with a Kinect for Windows sensor.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the Leap Motion hardware and the Kinect for Windows sensor is the operating range, which has implications in both speed and resolution as well. The Kinect for Windows sensor (and hence the Univeral Gesture Mouse) works over much larger distances (0.4-3m) vs. the ~0.6m range of the Leap Motion. This makes the Universal Gesture Mouse more practical as an interface for very large display e.g. projector systems, tiled displays, video walls, etc and for tracking users farther away from the computer.
Also because the Universal Gesture Mouse is based on the Kinect for Windows hardware platform the future may hold many new opportunities for face-tracking, full-body tracking, and voice input. The Universal Gesture Mouse is not meant to replace traditional mice, keyboards, or touchscreens but rather to augment and complement them.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the Leap Motion hardware and the Kinect for Windows sensor is the operating range, which has implications in both speed and resolution as well. The Kinect for Windows sensor (and hence the Univeral Gesture Mouse) works over much larger distances (0.4-3m) vs. the ~0.6m range of the Leap Motion. This makes the Universal Gesture Mouse more practical as an interface for very large display e.g. projector systems, tiled displays, video walls, etc and for tracking users farther away from the computer.
Also because the Universal Gesture Mouse is based on the Kinect for Windows hardware platform the future may hold many new opportunities for face-tracking, full-body tracking, and voice input. The Universal Gesture Mouse is not meant to replace traditional mice, keyboards, or touchscreens but rather to augment and complement them.
Will this work with the Kinect for XBOX sensor?
Unfortunately no, Microsoft's licensing restrictions limit the Universal Gesture Mouse to the Kinect for Windows sensor.
|
|
|
Prerequisites
- Hardware: Kinect for Windows sensor
- Operating System: Windows 7
Steps
- Download the Universal Gesture Mouse setup.exe file
- Double-click the setup file
- If you don't have Microsoft .NET 4 runtime the setup will install it for you (this is needed to run the Universal Gesture Mouse)
- When prompted install the Kinect for Windows 1.5 runtime (this can be skipped if already installed)
- Plug the Kinect for Windows into the USB port
- Run the Universal Gesture Mouse (Evaluation Edition) software
|
Starting the Universal Gesture Mouse shows the Mouse Dock and Control Panel. The Mouse Dock at the top of the screen indicates the Universal Gesture Mouse is inactive and the cursor is not being controlled.
On startup the Control Panel is transparent and the controls cannot be clicked. To activate the control panel, move your cursor to the lower right corner of the screen. This will make the Control Panel solid enabling you to change the settings. |
|
The Kinect should be able to lock onto your body position if you are within the field of view of the camera. If not adjust your body position until the Skeletal Wireframe and Virtual Trackpad appear. Appearance of the Skeletal Wireframe and Virtual Trackpad indicate the Kinect is correctly tracking the user.
A grey circle which is your cursor target will appear indicating the position of your hand within the Virtual Trackpad but your cursor will not be active. If at any point during the operation the Kinect cannot properly see you, the cursor target will turn grey. |
|
The Universal Gesture Mouse is activated when your primary-hand (as specified under the Hand setting) is momentarily raised above your head (pretend your grabbing the mouse from the Mouse Dock). This will turn the Virtual Trackpad red indicating the cursor is now being controlled with the Universal Gesture Mouse. Lower your hand into the Virtual Trackpad and your cursor will follow on the screen.
|
|
The position of your hand within the Virtual Trackpad corresponds to the target position of the cursor on the screen. The Universal Gesture Mouse can be docked anytime by momentarily reaching your primary-hand above your head. This will return the control of the cursor to your traditional mouse.
|
|
The Virtual Trackpad will follow you as you move in front of the Kinect enabling you to control the cursor from many different positions.
|
|
The Hover Click is the default click mode which will issue a left-click when the cursor target is held in a region (set by the Hover distance setting) for a small amount of time (set by the Hover timer setting).
The cursor target indicates the amount of time until clicking with a green fill. The cursor ring and cursor target will turn green when the click is issued. |
|
The Off-hand Push click enables you to issue a left-click by pushing your off-hand forward. The cursor target will scale in size as your hand moves forward providing visual feedback. This is a two-handed control enabling you to hold down the click or click and drag.
The cursor ring and cursor target will turn green when the click is issued. |
|
The Hover Toggle is similar to the Hover click but the left-click will be held down until you hover again. This is a one-handed implementation of a click and drag.
The cursor target indicates the amount of time until clicking or releasing with a green fill. The cursor ring and cursor target will turn green when the click is issued. |
|
The Virtual Trackpad can be locked in place if your off-hand is momentarily raised above the head. The Virtual Trackpad will turn yellow indicating its locked. This will prevent the Virtual Trackpad from following the user.
|
|
The cursor can "pinned" to the desktop to quickly enable finer control by momentarily extending your off-hand to the side. In order to enable this feature the Pinnable setting must be set (by default it is off). Your hand movements are then scaled by the Pinned scaler setting.
|
Closing the program
To close the Universal Gesture Mouse, activate the Control Panel by moving your cursor to the lower right corner of the screen and click the "X" button. Hitting ESC while the Universal Gesture Mouse is selected in the taskbar will also exit.
Locking to a single user
By default the Kinect will lock onto the most "active" user within its field of view. The Switcher sens parameter will control how "active" the other user must be in order for the Kinect to hand over control to that user. However, if the User setting is used, either by pressing the Prev/Next button, the user selected with this method will be permanent.
Customizable settings
|
Setting
User Hand Click mode Trackpad size Hover timer Hover distance Pad x-offset Pad x-offset Pinnable Pinned Scaler Ballistics Ballistics offset Ballistics scaler Filtering* Smoothing* Correction* Prediction* JitterRadius* MaxDevRadius* Switcher sens* Seated* * restart required |
Option
Prev/Next Right (default) Left Hover Click (default) Off-hand push Hover'n'Push Hover toggle 0.5X 1.0X 2.0X (default) 4.0x >0 (default = 15) >0 (default = 10) -1 to +1 (default = 0.15) -1 to +1 (default = 0.15) Yes No (default) >0 (default = 12X) Yes (default) No >0 (default = 1000) >0 (default = 500) Yes (default) No 0-1.0 (default = 0) 0-1.0 (default = 0) >=0 (default = 0) >=0 (default = 0) >=0 (default = 0) >0 (default = 0.98) Yes (default) No |
Function
Moves to the next available user. Changes which hand is the primary-hand. The primary-hand controls the cursor position while the off-hand position can issue click-commands, pin the cursor, or lock the Virtual Trackpad. (Note: the cursor must leave the textbox to see a change) Changes the method for issuing left-click commands. (Note: the cursor must leave the textbox to see a change) Controls the relative size of the Virtual Trackpad which is has the same aspect ratio of your primary screen. (Note: the cursor must leave the textbox to see a change) Specifies a length of time used for the Hover click, Hover'n'Push, and Hover toggle click. Specifies the distance in pixels for Hover click, Hover'n'Push, and Hover toggle click. Controls the x-position of the Virtual Trackpad relative to the users head position. Controls the y-position of the Virtual Trackpad relative to the users head position. Enables you to "pin" the cursor to the desktop for finer control. To pin the cursor, extend your off-hand to the side. The Virtual Trackpad will change to a blue color and a "pinned" indicator will appear. This will change the scaling relationship between your hand position and the cursor position by the amount specified under Pinned Scaler setting. When pinned this value determines the scaling relationship between the position of your hand in Virtual Trackpad. A value of one would be equivalent to normal or unpinned mode. Mouse Ballistics are a form of filtering or transfer function which affects the dynamics of the cursor movement. It can help to smooth out noise in the tracking data and create unique operating conditions. Parameter which effects the dynamic behavior of the cursor. Parameter which effects the dynamic behavior of the cursor. Microsoft's smoothing controls. This will help to smooth out noisy tracking data. For more information visit the Kinect MSDN resource on Joint Filtering. "Increasing the smoothing parameter value leads to more highly-smoothed skeleton position values being returned." (source: MSDN Joint Filtering) "Lower values are slower to correct towards the raw data, and appear smoother, while higher values will correct toward the raw data more quickly" (source: MSDN Joint Filtering) "The number of frames to predict into the future." (source: MSDN Joint Filtering) "Any jitter beyond this radius is clamped to the radius. " (source: MSDN Joint Filtering) "The maximum radius in meters that filtered positions are allowed to deviate from raw data." (source: MSDN Joint Filtering) This controls how sensitive the Kinect is to switching to a new user when more than one person is within the field of view. Uses either a 10-point or 20-point skeletal tracking model, primarily to differentiate between sitting or standing applications *these settings require the Universal Gesture Mouse program be restarted in order to see their effects |
Alces Technology, Inc.
Alces Technology is an innovative engineering company in Jackson, Wyoming dedicated to the research and development of new display technologies and products.
We've been working over the past six years to develop our own unique 3D sensor and display technology and during this time we began exploring unique applications with the Kinect sensor. As part of this work we developed the Universal Gesture Mouse to explore natural user interfaces (NUI) and to investigate the advantages and limitations of the Kinect system.
We are proud to offer the Universal Gesture Mouse for those users, groups, or organizations that would like to explore their own gesture applications but don't have the resources or expertise to start from scratch. For unique commercial opportunities please contact us.
Give it a try and let us know what you think!
We've been working over the past six years to develop our own unique 3D sensor and display technology and during this time we began exploring unique applications with the Kinect sensor. As part of this work we developed the Universal Gesture Mouse to explore natural user interfaces (NUI) and to investigate the advantages and limitations of the Kinect system.
We are proud to offer the Universal Gesture Mouse for those users, groups, or organizations that would like to explore their own gesture applications but don't have the resources or expertise to start from scratch. For unique commercial opportunities please contact us.
Give it a try and let us know what you think!
Discussion
Alces Technology, Inc.
650 W Elk Ave #8
Jackson, WY 83002
307-732-1994 x5
