I'm really wondering why nobody's selling a foot operated mouse yet, it would be pretty practical even for normal people when typing with both hands.
I'm not sure my feet have the accuracy to work as a mouse.
I think assistive devices do better as a class when some fraction of them are also usable or even attractive to able people as well. It gets us thinking about other modes of interaction and of course it brings the unit price for those items down out of the stratosphere.
Foot mouse will unfortunately stay niche, but when I saw the device in this article, I thought, "Why not for everybody?"
You should be thinking more of like a trackpoint for your feet/foot.
> Foot mouse will unfortunately stay niche, but when I saw the device in this article, I thought, "Why not for everybody?"
I can feel my tongue having a muscle ache just by looking at this.
* Only tongue tracking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH-z1KnIthM&t=1s * Head tracking mode (& wink to Neuralink demos :P) : https://youtu.be/6TTIsE4GMEU?si=TbS07BdjUaZDSwx4
Regarding fatigue: We constantly use our tongues for talking and eating without feeling tired and so far, current users haven’t reported tongue fatigue issues.
Accurate foot movements are just training I bet, just like with anything else. Arm amputees have shown again and again that it's just a matter of practice. Plus, were any of us really that proficient with a mouse when we first started? We take it for granted but we've been honing that for decades.
> trackpoint
Looking at how that one works, it's just four load cells. That would be exceedingly simple to reproduce with a microcontroller that supports HID. I might actually try to make one.
How long did you do your experiment? Obviously most of us are not typically used to point and move precisely with our feet. So to be efficient we would need to train for months but that doesn't mean we can't be precise with our feet if we were to dedicate enough time for it.
I once saw a documentary about a german woman who was born without arms. She would do everything with her feet, writing, drawing, smoking a cigarette or mounting a horse and holding the reins with one foot. We are much more adaptive than we think we are but we don't realize it when we have the luxury to not needing it.
We also build fine motor control in very young childhood; children can't color within the lines (for example) because the nerves just aren't there yet. I would expect someone born without arms to have better fine motor control of their legs than an adult that tries to develop the ability. And it takes them years - 7 or 8 years to get pretty decent control. Even if I had the neuroplasticity of a young child (I surely don't) I wouldn't want to spend years trying to develop that control.
I face this every day on the piano. You distribute motion between fingers, wrist, forearm, elbow, and shoulder based on the amount of fine control needed. Sure, you can use your shoulder to trill, but it is always going to be very slow and clumsy. finges are best, but you face fatigue, so you usually use wrist rotation to get muscles with more endurance suppling the gross motions, and then fingers for the fine control of dynamics. You can't change this physical reality, at the most you can compensate (e.g. someone with a fused wrist would have to find alternatives).