Other input devices

Other input devices which will not be further reviewed within this report include the following:

Dial

A dial is an input device with only one rotational DOF which is mainly used in CAD applications to control the view of a model or a scene. Usually, several dials are used to control more DOFs.

Paddle/Slider

Paddles and Sliders do also have only one DOF, but in this case it is a translational one. They are very cheap and are mainly used in the entertainment industry.

Trackball

The trackball's functionality is comparable with those of the mouse (see section 3.2.2 ). They are mostly used in portable computers (laptops and notebooks) in order to save the space that is needed to move a mouse.

Joystick

Joysticks are mainly used in the entertainment industry. They are used to control cursor movements in 2D and are equipped with one or more buttons.

Digitizer

Digitizers are 2D input devices for exact inputs of points, usually from already existing sketches. Their main purpose is to digitize hand-drawings, i.e. to get 2D scenes in a format which can be processed by a CAD program.

Eyetracker

Eyetracker are controlled by the movement of the user's eyes which are sensed with infrared light. It is possible for the user to control the cursor by simply looking in the desired direction.

Touchpad/Touchscreen

Both devices may be operated by a pen or by the user's fingertips. With the touchscreen, the user can directly point to objects on the screen. Both devices are mainly used for simple pointing and selection tasks.

Esprit Project 8579/MIAMI (Schomaker et al., '95)
Thu May 18 16:00:17 MET DST 1995