Abstract
Touch gestures made on the touchpad of a laptop lack the natural ergonomics of a physical mouse. This disclosure describes techniques that turn an everyday object into a physical mouse. The techniques leverage the presence of dual magnetometers embedded beneath the laptop base, used conventionally to detect the open/close state of the laptop clamshell. An everyday object with a metal component inside such as an earbud case or smartwatch, when placed near the laptop base, nontrivially distorts the dual-magnetometer readings. The readings are decoded into a set of canonical screen movements (slide up, down, left, or right). Diagonal movements are inferred by combining two canonical directions. In this manner, the described techniques enable everyday objects to mimic the functions of a physical computer mouse.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Shin, D, "Enabling Use of a Wearable as a Wireless Computer Mouse", Technical Disclosure Commons, (July 29, 2021)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/4506