IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON REHABILITATION ENGINEERING, VOL. 8, NO.
1, MARCH 2000
Controlling Mouse Pointer Position Using an Infrared
Head-Operated Joystick
D. Gareth Evans, Roger Drew, and Paul Blenkhorn
Abstract—This paper describes the motivation for and the
design considerations of a low-cost head-operated joystick. The
paper briefly summarizes the requirements of head-operated
mouse pointer control for people with disabilities before discussing
a set of technological approaches that can be used to satisfy these
requirements. The paper focuses on the design of a head-operated
joystick that uses infrared light emitting diodes (LED’s) and
photodetectors to determine head position, which is subsequently
converted into signals that emulate a Microsoft mouse. There are
two significant findings. The first is that, while nonideal device
characteristics might appear to make the joystick difficult to use,
users naturally compensate for nonlinearities, in a transparent
manner, because of visual feedback of mouse pointer position.
The second finding, from relatively informal, independent trials,
indicates that disabled users prefer a head-operated device that
has the characteristics of a joystick (a relative pointing device) to
those of a mouse (an absolute pointing device).
Index Terms—Head-operated mouse, human–computer interac-
tion, people with motor disabilities.
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Motivation for Work
P EOPLE whose disability prevents them from writing
and/or speaking can, with the appropriate access tech-
niques and communications software, carry out these tasks
with computer assistance. In addition, people whose physical
disabilities restrict access to written information in the form of
books and newspapers can access large and valuable informa-
tion sources from CD ROM’s and the Internet. In short, for a
significant number of people, access and independent control
over a computer system is highly desirable, if not essential.
For users who cannot control a computer through a stan-
dard keyboard and mouse, alternative interfaces have been de-
veloped. Keyboard emulators (on-screen keyboards) are often
used, with typing achieved by either selecting keys using a phys-
ical switch (of which there are many types selected according to
the user’s preference) through a scanning keyboard emulator or
by direct selecting the emulated keys by pointing and clicking.
The users of the latter require some sort of mouse or joystick
device to control the mouse cursor’s position and a method of
selecting the key. Switching may be achieved by switches ap-
Manuscript received March 31, 1999; revised May 1, 1999 and September
30, 1999. This work was supported by a grant from the Southern Trust and by
the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association.
D. G. Evans and P. Blenkhorn are with the Department of Computation,
University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST),
Manchester, M60 1QD, U.K.
R. Drew is with Canford Audio plc, Crowther Road, Washington, Tyne &
Wear, U.K.
Publisher Item Identifier S 1063-6528(00)01429-4.
1063–6528/00$10.00 © 2000 IEEE
107
propriate to a particular user’s needs or by dwelling on a key
for a period of time. There are a number of commercially avail-
able devices that act as ‘Head-Operated Mice’. Some are specif-
ically designed for people with disabilities, others have recently
been developed for the games market; examples of both types
are described below. This paper describes the design of another
Head-Operated Mouse. An important question that we must ad-
dress is, if there are commercially available devices, why is the
development of another device desirable?
The first answer to the question is the cost of those systems
specifically aimed for people with disabilities. In the U.K.,
these devices retail at around £1000 (equivalent to around
$1500 US). Therefore, a system that costs a fraction of this
price is highly desirable. Those devices that are aimed by the
games market might address this. This is a high volume market
and prices reflect that. The devices in this area retail for around
£100 (around $150 US) in the U.K., a tenth of the cost of
specialist devices. However, it is not clear as yet whether these
devices will have acceptable operational and aesthetic charac-
teristics for people with disabilities. Current devices aimed at
games users require the user to wear a considerable amount
of head mounted equipment and we know of no trials where
people with disabilities have used these products. Moreover,
it is not clear whether these devices will gain acceptance with
games users. Relatively low-cost head-operated mice have
been produced for ordinary computer users in the past, but have
quickly disappeared from the market. It seems, therefore, that
there is a definite need for a low-cost head-operated mouse
targeted at people with disabilities.
The second answer to the question concerns the operational
mode of the device. Operational modes are discussed in more
detail in Section II-B. In short, there are two types of device,
absolute pointing devices that act like a mouse, and relative
pointing devices that act like a joystick. Current commercial de-
vices are generally used as absolute pointing devices but there
appears to be no justification for this. Earlier work [1] conducted
by the authors led to the conclusion that a relative pointing de-
vice may be as good as, if not better, than an absolute pointing
device. Therefore, the system described here is justified on the
grounds that it provides, not only a lower cost system, but also
a system that has more satisfying operational characteristics as
perceived by the user. Indeed, preliminary comparative evalua-
tions, discussed in Section VI, support this.
B. Requirements of a “Head-Operated Mouse”
A “head-operated mouse” has a number of desirable charac-
teristics.
108 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON REHABILITATION ENGINEERING, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2000
• The “mouse” should work as a standard mouse and require
no custom driver software to run on the computer.
• The “mouse” should work with both standard desktop
computers and laptops.
• The “mouse” should be reliable. More specifically it
should be unaffected by, or at the very least recover from,
alterations in the physical environment such as: changes
in the level or spectrum of ambient light; changes to
the local electromagnetic field; changes in the distance
between the user and the computer; and alterations in the
orientation of a user and his/her computer
• There should be no physical connection between the user
and his/her computer, i.e., it should be wireless.
• Ideally the system should not require the user to have to
“wear” any equipment. However, a number of practical
approaches, including our own, do have this requirement.
If the user has to “wear” some equipment this should be
aesthetically pleasing, small, light, and comfortable.
• It is desirable that the clicking of mouse buttons be
integrated with the operational approach. However, in
many cases this is not practical and some other form of
mouse button activation either by appropriate switches or
by “dwelling” can be provided. If switches are used, the
device should permit these switches to be connected to it
and the switch depression mapped to mouse-button clicks
appropriately.
• In addition, a “head-operated mouse” will be subject to
cost requirements, such as low initial purchase cost and a
low cost of ownership.
II. APPROACHES TO HEAD-OPERATED MOUSE POINTER
CONTROL
There have been several approaches to the control of mouse
pointer position through head movement based on different op-
erating principles. In this section, we briefly discuss some of
these approaches.
To begin with we introduce a simple categorization scheme
for the general approach, and for the operating mode of the de-
vice.
A. Categorization of Approaches
One of the requirements outlined above stated that there
should be no physical connection between the user and the
computer he/she was controlling and, although the necessity for
the user to wear some equipment is deemed to be acceptable,
it is not necessarily desirable. We classify the approaches as
being the following:
• wireless with little or no user-mounted equipment;
• wireless with significant amounts of user-mounted equip-
ment;
• connected with significant amounts of user-mounted
equipment.
1) Wireless with Little or No User-Mounted Equip-
ment: One approach in this category is to analyze video
images, taken from a camera typically close to the computer
monitor, to determine the user’s head position. One method
of determining head position is to find the user’s eyes in the
video picture and to track the movement of the ocular sphere
and hence the movement of the head relative to the camera.
Note that the system tracks the whole of the eye and not the
pupil. It is the movement of the head that is being tracked, not
the pupil’s movement relative to the head (see Section II-A4
below). Unfortunately, the processing requirements for this
type of system are large and building practical systems that
run in real time is expensive [2]. However, it is very attractive
in that it does not require the user to wear any equipment and
that the mouse button depression may be integrated into the
approach by detecting eye blinks. Processing requirements may
be reduced if optic flow techniques are adopted although that
would probably rule out the chance of eye blinks being used
as mouse button selections. A further significant disadvantage
of analysing in this way is that lighting conditions need to
be controlled within fairly tight constraints for the system to
work reliably. One solution to this problem, at the expense of
additional system cost, is to “illuminate” the user with nonvis-
ible (i.e., infrared) light. With such a light source illumination
can be controlled, although processing overheads are still just
as high. A practical implementation of this sort of system is
described in [3].
Another approach requires the user to wear a small, reflec-
tive target on either his/her forehead or on a pair of glasses. A
device connected to the computer and situated close to the com-
puter’s monitor, illuminates the target with nonvisible (infrared
or near infrared) light. The device monitors the position of the
reflected signal and its position is used to control the mouse
pointer over a standard interface. This approach significantly
reduces the high processing overheads of the video-based ap-
proach at the small expense of the user having to wear the re-
flective target. However, the processing requirements are still
not trivial. There are a number of commercial systems that use
this approach, for example, Origin Instruments’ HeadMouse [4]
and Prentke Romish’s Head Master [5].
2) Wireless with Significant Amounts of User-Mounted
Equipment: In this approach the equipment mounted on a
user’s head transmits signals that can be detected by a receiver
unit mounted adjacent to the computer’s monitor. As far as
the computer is concerned the receiver provides signals that
emulate a Microsoft mouse. The head-mounted equipment may
be connected to other electronics and a power source local to
the user, mounted, say, on the user’s belt or in his/her pocket.
This style of approach has been used for some time, although
not necessarily for human-computer interaction. Head mounted
light sources have been used as communication aids for certain
user groups. See, for example, [6] and [7]. It is also used by at
least one commercial device, e.g., Madenta’s Tracker [8].
The approach that we describe in this paper is based on a
similar idea, except that we convert the transmitted signal into
mouse control signals.
3) Connected with Significant Amounts of User-Mounted
Equipment: In this approach, the user wears some head
mounted equipment that is connected to a local device, which
is, in turn, connected by a one or more cables, to a further
unit placed near the computer. In all cases, the signals that
are transmitted from the user’s local device to the computer’s
device could be transmitted by wireless means, either by using
EVANS et al.: CONTROLLING MOUSE POINTER POSITION USING AN INFRARED HEAD-OPERATED JOYSTICK
licence free telemetry radio modules or by using infrared trans-
mission. Wireless transmission would not in any way alter the
operation of the devices. However, it would add to system cost
and introduce some additional power supply considerations to
the design of the user’s local device.
Apparently, the simplest approach is to detect the user’s head
position relative to the Earth’s gravitational field. The very sim-
plest way of doing this is to use mercury switches to detect when
a user’s head is moved from a standard level position. Unfortu-
nately the characteristics of these devices make the implemen-
tation of a reliable practical system very difficult. Despite this
one commercially available system exploits this principle and
is both reliable and usable. A related approach is to mount a
pair of orthogonal potentiometers on the user’s head and using
free-swinging weights to determine the head’s position. As re-
ported in [1] these approaches have a number of drawbacks.
Perhaps the most significant is that in order to move the mouse
pointer left or right, users have to bend their heads toward their
shoulders, rather than rotating their heads to the left or right.
This style of movement can be uncomfortable.
Gyroscopes can be used to determine movement and these
could be the basis of a practical system based on head move-
ment. Indeed, there is a commercially available device based on
this technology. Unfortunately, the component costs for small
production runs using this approach are high; the cost of a pair
of gyroscopes being more than double the cost of all the parts
used in the system we describe later.
Another approach, also described in [1], is to detect the user’s
head position relative to the Earth’s magnetic field. This ap-
proach works reliably. However, it does have some defects. Like
the device described earlier it requires users to bend their necks
to move left and right. It is also subject to fluctuations in the
local magnetic field. These can occur when large metallic ob-
jects, like tables, chairs and filling cabinet drawers, are moved
close to the device. The approach is also not suited to users
in wheelchairs who may dynamically change their, and their
laptop’s, orientation with respect to the Earth’s magnetic field.
A further approach is to use infrared light emitting diodes
(LED’s) and photodetectors to determine head position. For ex-
ample an array of infrared LED’s can be mounted adjacent to
the computer monitor and a photodetector on the user’s head.
If the LED array is organized so that the detected irradiance of
each at the photodetector in some way encodes the relative posi-
tion of the user’s head to the monitor, a mouse can be developed.
Indeed, this is the basis of at least one commercial head-oper-
ated mouse, which is targeted at the games market. Moreover,
it is the basis of our approach and is described in detail in Sec-
tion III.
4) Other Approaches: The approaches described above all
rely on the user having full control over his/her head move-
ments. While the approach that we introduce in this paper also
has the same requirements, we note that there are other ap-
proaches that are based simply on eye movements relative to
the head.
One approach is similar to the video analysis techniques
described in Section II-A except that it is concerned with the
pupil’s movement with respect to the face, rather than relative
to a fixed camera. Such approaches are relatively processor
109
intensive and also have a significant problem to overcome,
that is that the user’s head must remain fixed in relation to the
camera position. One way to ensure that the head remains fixed
is get the user to hold his/her head in a fixed position, this is
generally accomplished by using a bite bar. This is not very
comfortable during sustained use.
Another approach is to fix the camera relative to the user’s
eye by mounting it on the user’s head [9]. In small quantities
such devices are relatively expensive. However, it is thought
that these devices may gain wide market acceptance through
the games industry. If they do become mass consumer products,
the cost will fall substantially, the target price is £100 sterling,
making them a very attractive option.
Other approaches do not use video images but detect eye
movement by electroocular potential. An example of such a
system is the Eagle Eyes system [10]. While it is not really a
mouse, it is sufficiently accurate for an experienced user to be
able to write his/her name in cursive script. A similar approach,
geared toward mouse pointer control is described in [11].
B. Operating Modes
A mouse pointer can be controlled in two ways, namely as an
absolute pointing device or as a relative pointing device. For an
absolute pointing device, the position of the device corresponds
to the position of the mouse pointer. For example, if the mouse
cursor is in the centre of the screen and it is desired that the
mouse cursor be moved to the top left of the screen, the device
is moved up and to the left until the desired position is reached
and held in that position until further movement is required. In
short, the mouse cursor moves, when the device moves. Most of
the conventional hand-operated computer mice and trackerballs
operate in this way. Although in the case of the former, there
is the opportunity to pick up the mouse and re-position it on a
desktop without altering the mouse cursor’s position.
Relative pointing devices work by displacing the device until
the desired position of the mouse cursor is reached, at which
point, the device is moved back into a neutral area (a “dead-
band”). The mouse cursor will only move when the device is dis-
placed from this deadband. Standard joysticks and a keyboard’s
cursor keys work on this principle.
Head-operated mice can use either principle, although abso-
lute positioning requires typically more precise head position
control and suffers from low immunity to interference in its en-
vironment. The device that we describe in this paper is com-
monly used as a relative pointing device. However, it can be
enabled to work as an absolute positioning device if desired,
but the resolution is severely reduced (see later). Section VI in-
cludes results of a preliminary evaluation of the two operating
modes.
1) Discussion: Video-based approaches would seem to be
the ideal solution to head-operated control of mouse pointer po-
sition. However, there are few practical systems, and these are of
relatively high cost. Where cheaper alternatives have been con-
structed they have tended to have significant operational diffi-
culties. For example, the device based on the Earth’s magnetic
field requires users to adopt unnatural, tiring positions for left
and right movement.
110 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON REHABILITATION ENGINEERING, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2000
Fig. 1. Basic LED driver and Photodiode receiver circuits.
Fig. 2. The irradiation pattern of an LED—viewed side on.
These observations led us to explore other possibilities for the
head-operated control of mouse pointer position. An approach
based on line-of-sight infrared communications is described in
this paper, because this provides a low cost, wireless system.
III. PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION
A. Basic Principles
Fig. 1 shows a simple light emitting diode (LED)-based
transmitter and a photodiode-based receiver. An LED could
be chosen that operates in the visible spectrum or at infrared
frequencies. However, LED’s are more efficient at wavelengths
greater than 900 nm (nearly infrared) and silicon photodiodes
have sensitivity peaks have around 900 nm, so infrared gives
better range [8].
The output voltage at the receiver is proportional to the
amount of light (the irradiation ) detected by the photodiode.
Ignoring any other sources of light, is given by:
(1)
where is the radiant intensity of the LED and is the sepa-
ration between the LED and photodiode. is dependent upon
the current flowing through the LED (controlled by the variable
resistor VR1 in Fig. 1), the efficiency of the LED and, to a lesser
extent, the temperature of the LED.
The irradiation pattern of the LED is not uniform in all di-
rections. Fig. 2 shows a polar plot of an idealized irradiation
pattern of an LED. The irradiation at point is given by (1).
Fig. 3. The irradiation pattern of an LED—viewed end on.
Fig. 4. The irradiation pattern of two LED’s—viewed side on.
Consider point B, which is the same distance from the LED as
point , but is displaced . The radiant intensity
here is reduced with respect to , due to the nonuniformity of
the LED’s irradiation pattern. Now, we can relate, in theory at
least, the irradiation at point to its angular displacement from
a given position, or alternatively relate the irradiation at a fixed
point to the relative angular displacement of an LED.
A single LED and single receiver are insufficient to determine
the relative position in two-dimensional space. Fig. 3 shows
contours of equal irradiation at some fixed distance—for ex-
ample, the section in Fig. 2. Point , the centre of the
beam, has the maximum irradiation. Points all re-
ceive the same irradiation, yet are in different positions relative
to the maximum. To distinguish between these points we need
to use multiple LED’s together with a single receiver or a single
LED with multiple receivers. The principle is explained using
multiple LED’s and a single receiver, and here we constrain the
discussion to determining the position in one dimension, that is,
considering Fig. 3 whether we are at position or position .
The basis of the approach is to use a pair of LED’s to de-
termine angular position. Consider Fig. 4. Here we have two
LED’s ( and ) whose idealized irradiation patterns overlap.
As one moves from position to position , the irradiation due
to decreases and increases, similarly as one moves from
or , the irradiation due to increases and decreases. If the
light emitted from and is encoded, so that the receiver can
distinguish between them, the receiver can determine the irradi-
ation due to each. With appropriate processing, this method can
be used to determine the relative angular position.
To determine the position in two dimensions, one has to add
an extra LED. However, if two LED’s are added so that there is
EVANS et al.: CONTROLLING MOUSE POINTER POSITION USING AN INFRARED HEAD-OPERATED JOYSTICK
Fig. 5. The arrangement of the LED’s—viewed end on.
Fig. 6. The irradiation patterns of the LED’s—viewed end on.
a pair of LED’s for each axis, the discussion, and, indeed, the
design of the system, is simplified. Fig. 5 shows the arrangement
of four LED’s viewed from the receiver and assumes that the
LED’s are angled so that their irradiation patterns overlap, as
in Fig. 4. If the LED array is rotated to the right (viewed from
the receiver), the irradiation due to will increase and will
decrease. See Fig. 6, where the contours of equal irradiation are
shown for each LED as viewed at the receiver, and we have
moved from point to point . As Fig. 6 shows, the irradiation
due to and will also be reduced, without any movement in
the vertical plane. However, the irradiation will reduce by an
equal amount; with appropriate processing at the receiver, no
vertical movement will be detected.
B. System Configuration
The basic system configuration is shown in Fig. 7. The user
wears a Head Mounted Unit (HMU) that communicates with a
Mouse Emulation Unit (MEU).
To implement a practical system, we must make two choices.
The first concerns the number of LED’s and photosensors. Ear-
lier we described a system that used two pairs of orthogonally
mounted LED’s (although we could equally use three LED’s
mounted at 120 to one another) and a single photosensor. The
same principle of operation applies if a single LED is used
with multiple receivers. We choose to use multiple LED’s and a
single receiver. This decision is based on cost, as receivers and
the required signal conditioning circuitry are more expensive
111
Fig. 7. The arrangement of the head-operated joystick.
than the LED’s and their associated circuits. However, it must
be said that decision is marginal and there are some advantages
to using a single LED (such as power requirements and size)
when the LED is head-mounted. We choose to use four rather
than three LED’s. Three might appear to reduce costs, but, as
processing requirements rise, it is thought that there may in-
creased costs when the signals are processed, so we have chosen
to use four. Again the decision is marginal.
A rather more straightforward decision concerns whether the
photosensor is placed in the HMU and the LED’s in the MEU or
vice versa. If the photosensor is in the HMU the signals derived
from it that encode the relative head position must be relayed
back to the MEU for conversion into emulated mouse move-
ments. This either requires direct cabling or telemetry using
wireless or infrared. At least one commercial system adopts the
approach of mounting the photosensor and associated circuitry
in the MEU, returning the derived signals via a cable. The alter-
native approach is to mount the LED’s in HMU. In this situation
wireless operation is achieved, as the processing of the photo-
sensor’s signals are local to MEU. This is the approach that we
adopt.
In summary, the system described in this paper uses multiple,
head-mounted LED’s [we now choose refer to the HMU as the
transmitter unit (TxU)] and a single receiver in the MEU, which
we will now refer to as the receiver unit (RxU).
C. LED Mounting and Device Characteristics
We need to be able to align the LED’s so that their beams
overlap to give ideal characteristics at the receiver. Fig. 8 shows
irradiation due to two LED’s ( and ) in the same plane
against angular displacement at three different alignments
together with a plot of the difference against angular
displacement. Fig. 8(b) shows the ideal arrangement, whose
difference function is linear in the range between the two peaks.
The separation of the two peaks determines the operating range
of the device. If the spacing is narrow (Fig. 8(a)), discrimination
is poor and, if the spacing is wide (Fig. 8(c)), the difference
function become nonlinear. It is difficult to analytically deter-
mine the optimal alignment. By experimentation at “normal”
operating distances, the mounting shown in Fig. 9 with a 15
mounting angle was found to be optimal for wide-angle devices
(60 half-angle devices). It would seem that this angle needs to
be precisely set for efficient operation, but this is not so. The
irradiation patterns shown in Figs. 2, 3, and 8 are idealized;
112
Fig. 8. The received irradiation for various arrangements of two LED’s.
Fig. 9. The mounting of the LED’s.
practical devices deviate from this. Experience shows that their
irradiation patterns may be asymmetric and they may also have
patterns that have ‘flat tops’ or even irradiation patterns that
have maxima that are not at the centre of the beam. The patterns
often have very sharp cut-offs outside the centre of the beam.
Moreover, between devices of the same type, there is consider-
able variation in irradiation pattern. These characteristics are
thought to be due to the lenses of the LED’s, which have short
focal length and may be subject to manufacturing variations.
These problems compromise the accuracy of the measurement
of angular displacement and moreover may affect the optimal
alignment for any given pair of LED’s.
The problems are not as serious as one might suppose. This
is for two reasons. Firstly, we chose to operate primarily as a
relative pointing device. This means that, in the simplest case,
we only need to detect when head position has moved from the
central deadband and the direction in which it has moved, al-
though we may chose (by setting appropriate dip-switches in
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON REHABILITATION ENGINEERING, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2000
the receiver, see below) to determine how far it is away form the
deadband and control mouse speed so that greater deviations
from the deadband cause greater speed. Secondly, and most sig-
nificantly, there is a feedback loop. The user monitors the posi-
tion of the mouse pointer on the screen and moves his/her head
accordingly, effectively compensating for the nonideal irradia-
tion patterns. This makes the system very resilient to manufac-
turing variations in the LED’s and also to the alignment of the
LED’s.
IV. SYSTEM DESIGN
A. Transmitter Unit Design
The TxU consists of two parts, an array of LED’s that are
mounted on the user’s head and a small control box that can be
clipped to the user’s belt or rest on their lap. Only the LED’s are
mounted on the head.
The TxU signals to the RxU, from which the RxU determines
the angular displacement of the head and also the state of the
two mouse buttons. The latter are physically implemented as
sockets on the Control Box into which users can connect stan-
dard switches according to their preferences.
The operation of the TxU is explained using the schematic
diagram shown in Fig. 10. The output of each of the LED’s and
the signal received by the RxU are shown in Fig. 11. Fig. 11
shows each LED is modulated by an 11-KHz signal at a 25%
duty cycle. With an appropriate receiver (see Section IV-B
below), the modulation removes interference from other light
EVANS et al.: CONTROLLING MOUSE POINTER POSITION USING AN INFRARED HEAD-OPERATED JOYSTICK
Fig. 10. A simplified schematic of the transmitter.
sources. The modulation frequency must be chosen so that it
away from the line frequency of a computer monitor (generally,
30–35 KHz) and modern electronic ballast fluorescent lights
(around 30 KHz), otherwise interference may be picked up at
the receiver.
The TxU uses a time-division multiplexed protocol to
transfer the necessary data (the four LED positions and two
mouse button states) to the RxU, as shown in Fig. 11. First,
all LED’s are illuminated. The RxU uses this pulse as a
synchronization pulse. There then follows a gap after which
the right LED and then the left LED’s are illuminated. Next
the state of the right mouse button is sent. If it is depressed, all
LED’s are illuminated, as in the synchronization pulse. The up
and down LED’s are illuminated in turn, before the state of the
left mouse button is sent. To ensure reliable synchronization
of the receiver, the transmitter waits for a period as long as the
original symbol stream, restarting the transmission with the
synchronization pulse. This gives 16 transmissions per second
and gives acceptable operation.
One important design consideration is the amplitude of the
synchronization and mouse button state pulses. As these are the
sum of all four LED outputs, they will, if full illumination of
the LED’s is used, be considerably larger than the output for a
single LED. As automatic gain control (AGC) is used at the RxU
and is controlled by the synchronization pulse, this would mean
that very low amplitudes are detected for the single LED’s. Thus
the LED’s are not illuminated to their normal levels during the
synchronization and mouse button periods. The required level is
difficult to calculate analytically and has been set empirically.
Occasionally this means that the signal received for a single
LED exceeds that of the synchronization pulse. In this case the
AGC simply adjusts and the system operates normally. The only
requirement is that the synchronization pulse is detected.
The design of the final system is slightly different to that
discussed above, although the principles remain the same. The
transmitter is implemented using a PIC 16C54 microcontroller
to control the illumination of the LED’s; this reduces system
113
cost and power consumption compared to the discrete design
implied by Fig. 10.
B. Receiver Unit Design
The RxU is responsible for processing the signals from the
HMU and encoding these as standard mouse control signals. A
simple block diagram of the receiver is shown in Fig. 12.
The light is received by a photodiode that is configured with a
bandpass filter. The bandpass filter’s design is intimately linked
to the characteristics of the photodiode and it is present to re-
ject extraneous infrared light. The filter chosen is a single LC
resonator. This is low noise, has zero-power consumption, pro-
vides a high impedance load for the photodiode giving a good
signal at the modulated frequency, and gives excellent rejection
of unwanted light.
The next stage, an HF preamplifier, has a maximum gain of
around 1000. It is controlled using an AGC element. The AGC
is generally controlled by the “slow AGC” signal from the de-
modulator. This gives an AGC with a fast attack and a slow
delay characteristic that minimizes the changes in gain between
sampling. However, if there are significant changes in the re-
ceived signal, due, for example, to movement of the user toward
or away from the receiver. There is a possibility that this AGC
may not recover in time. Therefore, a fast AGC is also provided.
This is triggered by the microcontroller, in the gap between the
synchronization pulse and the other signals (see Fig. 11), when
the received synchronization signal is outside a specified range.
This ensures that the signals from the single LED’s are mea-
sured consistently.
A linear rectifier with a minimum voltage gain of approxi-
mately 3 then demodulates the signal. The signal is then am-
plified by a low frequency dc amplifier and passes through an
active filter that removes the residual carrier component. This
filter is designed to compensate for the slow rise time of the LC
resonator.
114 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON REHABILITATION ENGINEERING, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2000
Fig. 11. The transmission protocol.
Fig. 12. A simplified schematic of the receiver.
The microcontroller is responsible for sampling the incoming
signal, determining head position and switch status and sending
appropriate mouse control signals through its serial port to the
PC. We use a PIC 16C71 microcontroller. It has more than ad-
equate performance, a low parts cost and low power require-
ments. The analogue processing is carried out using a quad
CMOS opamp (TLC274). This is low cost and more than ad-
equate for work at 8 KHz.
C. Microcontroller Software
This section focuses on the processing required to determine
the mouse movement. As noted in Section IV-A the determi-
nation of angular position in one dimension, say the horizontal
plane, is given by (where is signal derived from the left
LED and the right). However, this is not ideal for a number
of reasons.
EVANS et al.: CONTROLLING MOUSE POINTER POSITION USING AN INFRARED HEAD-OPERATED JOYSTICK 115

First, as noted in Section III, the signal derived from the left
and right LED’s is also dependent on the movement in the ver-
tical plane. However, one can easily scale the difference
by dividing by . In practice, however, this approach has
problems, because, as becomes small (toward
the margins of operation) and thus noise and quantization errors
start to dominate. We therefore need to multiply the expression
by some factor. Experimentation shows that, if Fig. 13. The mounting of the photodiodes for wide user angle.
one uses a factor of , i.e., we use only the difference func-
tion , the system works acceptably well, provided that the
result is processed in the correct way, as discussed below.
Second, we need to consider the operational characteristics
of the device as perceived by the user. It is thought that it is de-
sirable that, as the head moves further away from the deadband
position, the mouse pointer should move more quickly. Thus,
close to the deadband the user has fine control, further away
from the deadband, the mouse pointer should move much faster.
This requires a nonlinear response. An associated problem is
that we require a deadband. If we directly use the result of
, head positioning becomes critical and there is signif-
icant “mouse pointer creep.” These problems can be overcome
if the result of is used as an index into a look-up table,
which effectively encodes the rules for the deadband and mouse
speed. Indeed, the system contains a number of rule sets that
Fig. 14. Transmitter unit.
govern the size of the deadband and the speed of the mouse.
These can be selected by DIP switches in the receiver unit.
While this arrangement may not seem ideal, in that movement evaluation shows that the user adapts in an unconscious way, as
in the vertical plane is not factored out of the determination of far as he/she is concerned the system works perfectly. The de-
horizontal position, and vice versa, the system works very well. vice can be configured as an absolute pointing device. Here the
This is another example of the user’s ability to use visual feed- resolution is much less than that achieved by commercial sys-
back of the mouse pointer position to correct for defects in the tems aimed at people with disabilities. The maximum resolution
design of the system and its components (see Section III-C). The of our device is and at this level one requires good
user does not realize that he/she is compensating. control of head position to maintain selection of a given area.
Moreover, in this mode, the device cannot emulate the signals
produced by a Microsoft mouse and a special driver has to be
V. PERFORMANCE AND RESULTS loaded to interpret the serial input.
The system has an effective transmitter to receiver range of One of the motivations for developing this device was to pro-
15 cm to 10 m and is tolerant of changes in transmitter to re- duce a usable, low cost device. The device is commercially
ceiver distance when the system is in use. If an array of three available in the U.K. The device retails for £200 (around $300
photodiodes is used at the receiver, as shown in Fig. 13, the ef- US), this is roughly a quarter of the commercially available
fective angle of use is better than 120 in the horizontal plane. devices aimed at people with disabilities. Of course, as noted
This gives considerable freedom of seating position and move- above our device is not as sophisticated or accurate (as mea-
ment. sured by the resolution of absolute position) as these devices.
The TxU requires 2 mA at 3 V. For two alkaline bat- But the real question concerns whether the device is as least as
teries this gives a working life of 1300 h, which is around 120 usable as the more expensive devices. This issue is addressed in
eight-hour days. The RxU is powered directly from the PC’s se- Section VI.
rial port and requires no other power source. The system will
work with laptop computers, but obviously puts a small addi-
VI. EVALUATION
tional load on their batteries.
One interesting question is how accurate is the system at mea- Around 40 users, of whom nine were people with disabilities
suring angular displacement? Of course, as discussed earlier belonging to target user group, have used the device. All users
this depends on the uniformity of the irradiation patterns of the have successfully used the device. One significant result con-
LED’s, which we find, by experience, rather than detailed and cerns the way in which left-right movement is accomplished.
systematic study, to be rather variable. The interesting result of Devices that use certain types of technology for determining
the work, is that, when working as a relative pointing device this head position (for example those based on gravitational or mag-
does not much matter. The user readily compensates for nonlin- netic fields) require the user to accomplish left or right move-
earities by monitoring the position of the mouse pointer. One ment by bending their necks, so that their ears are moved to-
might suppose that this would be annoying to the user. But our ward their shoulders. All of our earlier devices worked in this
116 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON REHABILITATION ENGINEERING, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2000
Fig. 15. Transmitter unit worn by a user.
Fig. 16. Receiver unit.
way. Users reported that this type of movement was uncomfort-
able and very tiring after even relatively short periods of use
[1]. The new device has a much more natural left to right move-
ment, in which users move their head to look to their left or right
twisting, rather than bending, their necks. In effect, the mouse
pointer’s position follows the position of a user’s nose. This is
a much more natural movement and is reported as being much
less tiring and operation can be sustained for long periods. Rel-
atively informal comparative trials have been undertaken with 9
disabled users. First, they used a commercially available, abso-
lute positioning, “mouse-style” device to interact with a number
of standard Windows applications. They then used our mouse, a
relative positioning “joystick-style” device to carry out the same
set of tasks. All nine users reported that the “joystick-style” of
operation was much easier to use. The reasons for this are not
clear, but we speculate that “joystick-style” devices require less
precise head positioning than “mouse-style” devices, because,
when the desired mouse pointer position has been reached the
joystick user can rest his or her head in the relatively large dead-
band position. Whereas, the absolute mouse user, has to keep his
or her head at the desired position. Any slight movement from
this position will cause the mouse pointer to move.
VII. STATUS
As noted above the Head-Operated Joystick is available as a
commercial product in the U.K. Fig. 14 shows the Transmitter
Unit, Fig. 15 the Transmitter Unit being worn by one of the
authors, and Fig. 16 shows the receiver unit.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank P. Hawes of the Foundation
for the Communication for the Disabled for conducting the eval-
uation and making a number of helpful suggestions to the de-
velopment of the device. The authors wish to acknowledge the
contribution of S. Pettitt to the development of this and earlier
head-operated devices.
REFERENCES
[1] D. G. Evans, S. Pettit, and P. Blenkhorn, “A head operated ‘Joystick’,”
in Proc. 5th Int. Conf. Comput. Helping People Special Needs, R. Old-
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[2] M. V. Rigol, “Determining head position for mouse emulation,” M.Sc.
thesis, UMIST, 1996.
[3] J. Colineau et al., “Laser mouse,” in Proc. 2nd TIDE Congr., P. Porrero
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[6] W. A. Hyman, G. E. Muller, and J. S. Neigut, “Laser diodes for head
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[9] (1999, Apr. 12). [Online]. Available: http://www.visioncs.com/
[10] J. Gips, P. DiMattia, F. X. Curran, and P. Olivieri, “Using eagle eyes—An
electrodes based device for controlling computers with your eyes—To
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People Special Needs, R. Oldenbourg, Ed., 1996, pp. 77–84.
[11] G. Norris and E. Wilson, “The eye mouse: An ocular prosthesis,” Circuit
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[12] T. Nielsen, “Opto-electronics by design,” Electron.Wireless World, pp.
364–360, May 1994.
D. Gareth Evans received the B.Sc. degree in elec-
trical and electronic engineering from the University
of Manchester, U.K., in 1985 and the Ph.D. degree
from the University of Manchester Institute of Sci-
ence and Technology, U.K., in 1995.
He has been a lecturer in the Department of
Computation at UMIST for the past ten years. He
is a Co-Director of the Technology for Disabled
People Unit at the University of Manchester Institute
of Science and Technology (UMIST), Manchester,
U.K. His research interests include alternative
interfaces to computers for people with disabilities, navigation and orientation
systems for blind people, speech synthesis and training, and assistive devices
for people with a range of disabilities.
EVANS et al.: CONTROLLING MOUSE POINTER POSITION USING AN INFRARED HEAD-OPERATED JOYSTICK
Roger Drew received the M.Eng. degree in micro-
electronic systems engineering from University of
Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
(UMIST), Manchester, U.K., in 1998 following a
career in electronics engineering.
The work described in this paper is based on his
third-year undergraduate project and subsequent em-
ployment with the Technology for Disabled People
Unit at UMIST.
117
Paul Blenkhorn received the B.Sc. degree in mathe-
matics from the University of Manchester, U.K.
He has been an active developer of systems for
people with disabilities for the past 18 years. He
is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of
Computation at University of Manchester Institute
of Science and Technology (UMIST), Manchester,
U.K., and is Co-Director of the Technology for Dis-
abled People Unit. He has broad research interests in
the area of technology and people with disabilities.