alt Hacker NewsMouthPad: A Tongue-Controlled Touchpad
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Big tech will harvest your mewing data now
This seems really clever. I don't know anything about what it takes to serve the targeted needs, so I could be wrong. But it's the sort of thing that pops out as really cool and useful, tech that makes the world better.
Surgery robots have a tongue controller. It takes a while to train on that, but when you‘re trained your tongue muscle is the most precise way to control, say, subtle incisions deep inside the brain.
If it can be made comfortable and cheap enough, this could be useful as an interface for AR glasses. The tongue is very sensitive and dextrous, and I imagine that even swipe typing with this kind of touchpad is probably feasible.
This looks great for accessibility specifically. My fiancee is partially-sighted, so (while not directly related) I'm extremely supportive of developments in assistive tech. There's a lot of difference to people's lives that can be made.
For me personally - maybe because I'm not a very nice person, or maybe it's an association that many people would make - clever as the pun in the product name is, it does make me think of saying "mousepad" with a lisp. This seems like a non-ideal association.
So refreshing to see such and interesting innovation in the hardware space! Curious as to what’s the business play here, as at $1400 a piece these don’t seem like mass-market devices. And the high-end market is even more constrained with the size of the subpopulation it is aimed at. Regardless of the business model, fingers crossed that more great assistive tech like this one ships!
This is a very novel UX and assistive tech, and I know more users globally (and in India for me) would find this useful.
Wonder if tongue would get tired from it or not an issue.
I can see exam candidates having mouth inspections in the future.
Love the name.
Step aside Codex Micro!
it's magic!
chocolate flavored touchpad please
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As someone who uses head, eye and facial gesture tracking regularly while doing long medical treatments which tie up both my hands, I would really love something like this.