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Initial Hardware

A project log for KeyGlove

Inspired by Sci-Fi, an improved wearable keyboard/mouse with gestural enhancements. Suitable for use in VR environments as well.

eric-jacobEric Jacob 08/19/2014 at 17:331 Comment

My initial motivation was to build a keyboard for myself. One that allowed you to really focus on the computer. Ideally, the keys would fit to your hand and no eye-hand coordination would be required. Then, you can focus on learning the association of what action does what key (or modifier). This would increase the learning speed and also increase typing rates. Minimizing finger motion will improve speed as well.

Other improvement ideas:

The hand should be held in a more natural position, for myself, my hands would prefer to be tilted outwards slightly. The keyboard puts a slight torque on my wrist.

Split the keyboard into two parts, allowing each arm and hand to rest naturally.

Integrate mouse functionality so as to remove the time delay and re-orientation between mouse use and keyboard use.

These ideas lead to the hardware skeleton keyboard. Here is a photo of a concept for a single finger. One advantage of using multiple buttons per finger is that it can reduces repetitive stress disorders.

The hardware keyboard is neat, but it has some disadvantages. For one, it would have to mold to each users hands. This is really hard. Also, it will be rather expensive as nice buttons are costly. Finally, another motivation is the desire to use a keyboard in a virtual environment. I can see in the near future that we will be able to use a VR headset to have a wrap around computer screen. This would be idea for work that I do, developing physical theories for rocket engine design. I often need many screens with either code, text, or documents that I am creating. In this environment, as I am 'wired in' I would a hardware keyboard would be limiting as I am no longer connected to my surroundings. 

Furthermore, in VR environments, you would prefer to be able to move around. Then, the idea of a fixed desk or keyboard is outdated.

This lead to the glove based keyboard. The actual inspiration was from the book 'Ready Player One' as the main character was using his haptic gloves in the VR environment, I saw that as the solution to my keyboard problem. From there is stemmed into other advantages, namely the lack of a physical reference and the simplicity of the design.

There are some challenges here, as getting enough keys is hard (but do-able). And getting position of the fingers is hard too. I hope that you will see that this idea is functional in the following posts.

Discussions

PointyOintment wrote 08/19/2014 at 17:40 point
Where's the photo?

For keyboard/mouse integration inspiration, check out King's Assembly on Kickstarter.

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