3-D MOUSE

WITH THE ADVENT of the mouse in the late '60s, computer users were allowed to navigate the two dimensions of the computer screen. Lately, a need to traverse increasingly intricate virtual worlds has arisen. Architectural models of buildings, the wings of a jet plane, and the surface of alien planets are just a few of the worlds facing today's computer users. Three Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) electrical engineering students developed a mouse capable of tackling such environments. Daniel Wallance, Wojciech Krajewski, and Andrea Baker went to Ireland as part of their senior design project and worked for 10 weeks in the fall to develop their mouse.

Living at the University of Limerick, they worked at AMT Ireland, a public-private company that works closely with the university to make salable products of its research. "They take crazy ideas and see if they can make them work," Daniel Wallance says.

The company's "crazy idea" was to have the students build a prototype for a 3-dimensional mouse. The system they designed involved a series of magnets and sensors arranged in a grid of one centimeter squares. AMT Ireland was impressed with their work. "They have demonstrated the resourcefulness required of any good design engineer," said John Harris, research engineer at AMT Ireland.

Robert Gardner is an associate editor at Prism.

Copyright American Society for Engineering Education Summer 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved