When the rubber hits the road in the next generation of wireless and consumer electronics devices, Varatouch Technologies thinks it will have a pole position.
The Sacramento, California, company has developed a technology that could supplant the mouse, and become the de facto "pointer" in everything from computer keyboards to set-top boxes to PDAs.
Varatouch's namesake pointer couples a one-inch circuit board with a specialized rubber-resistor material composed of silicon and carbon. The sensor picks up the movements of a small plastic ball which sits atop the unit. The ball only needs to be rotated about 15 degrees to cover the range a cursor moves on screen.
The upcoming convergence of the PC and the TV, and the increasing computing capabilities of PDAs and cellular phones will call for new approaches to interface design, said Michael Rogers, Varatouch's president.
"The one computer technology that will not converge is the mouse," he said. "The paradigm fails, there is nowhere to roll it around. The mouse worked well for the office, but with convergence we see integration coming in the home, the car, the person ... you need something new. We have the opportunity to be that something."
Because of its size and design, Varatouch can be placed on a computer keyboard, on the face of a PDA, or even on a cell phone. The device has just a few parts: a one-inch circuit board, the rolling ball, and the rubber resistor material. Unlike a mouse's ball and rollers, Varatouch's parts don't get grimy.
Rogers called his sensor "the world's lowest-cost method of converting motion to a useful signal," and said the unit is much cheaper than even the cheapest trackball on the market.
Every major keyboard manufacturer plans to adopt the technology, Rogers said. Sejin America of Santa Clara, California, is among the first licensees. The company will use the device in wireless computer keyboards and remote controls. Varatouch also has licensing deals with major cell phone manufacturers and keyboard makers.
Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the mouse, said it's inevitable that something better will come along, and won't hold a grudge against anyone who comes up with an invention that supplants his own.
But, he added, the real challenge is to come up with a computer interface that fits people's working environments -- not an interface that forces people to adopt an environment.
"Any innovation has to fit with everyone's environment, rather than thinking of how people in ten years will use it," said Engelbart, who founded the Bootstrap Institute. "Before people start talking about how much they don't want to learn to do something different, they should learn what the payoff will be if they do. Our computer interface hasn't had that experience."
