Surface Mouse: Supplementing Multi-Touch Interaction With A Virtual Mouse

We present Surface Mouse, a virtual mouse for multi-touch surface computing. Although moving away from the direct touch manipulation paradigm, our system brings many significant benefits seen in absolute clutched devices to surface computing. Features include high and variable control device gains, several degrees of freedom in a single hand gesture, ability to target small GUI items, and a familiar method for reaching far areas of large displays. Importantly, this benefit is realized by leveraging what users already know and have tremendous experience with - physical mice. Results from our proof-of-concept evaluation reflect this; users were able to use and recognize our system without training or prompts. Being entirely virtual, Surface-Mouse can be implemented in existing systems with little more than a software update.