Hands-free Computer Mouse

Reported February 2008

SEATTLE, Wash. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Simple sounds matched with new software are helping people get where they want to go … and it's all hands-free.

Rich Eldridge suffered a spinal cord injury in a car accident ten years ago. Limited mobility in his arms and hands makes using a computer mouse difficult. But vocal joystick software being developed at the university of Washington is making hands-free mouse movement a reality.

"So what I am doing is making vowel sounds to direct the mouse pointer on the screen," Eldridge said. "So when I go 'ahhhh,' the pointer will go to the right, when I say 'ohhhh,' it will move down. If I wanted to click on something I just go 'kkk,' as in click."

"The vocal joystick is to a mouse what speech recognition is to a keyboard," Jeff Bilmes, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington told Ivanhoe.

Dr. Bilmes, with the help of some of his electrical engineering students, has paired a regular personal computer and an inexpensive computer microphone with software to create fluid computer movements -- using only the voice.

"About a 100 times per second, so every 10 milliseconds, the computer listens to what your voice is doing, Dr. Bilmes said.

They are also experimenting using the software to control a small robotic arm.

As for the symphony of sounds it takes to run the software … "I don't really think about the sounds, I am more focused on what I am looking at and where I want to go," said Eldridge.

Thanks to this human-computer interaction, Eldridge can now rely on his voice to get him where his hands can't take him anymore.

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Dr. Jeff Bilmes
Seattle, WA
(206) 221-5236
bilmes@ee.washington.edu

Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(310) 394-1811
http://www.hfes.org

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