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As someone who uses head, eye and facial gesture tracking regularly while doing long medical treatments which tie up both my hands, I would really love something like this.
I never even thought of that use case! What kind of stuff do you do on a computer while doing procedures? Like reference material? Tracking what you’ve done?
If it can be made comfortable and cheap enough, this could be useful as an interface for AR glasses. The tongue is very sensitive and dextrous, and I imagine that even swipe typing with this kind of touchpad is probably feasible.
So refreshing to see such and interesting innovation in the hardware space! Curious as to what’s the business play here, as at $1400 a piece these don’t seem like mass-market devices. And the high-end market is even more constrained with the size of the subpopulation it is aimed at. Regardless of the business model, fingers crossed that more great assistive tech like this one ships!
Disagree that niche size is the constraint. Insurance reimbursement for assistive tech exists precisely for small, high-need populations, that's how most wheelchairs and eye-tracking devices get funded, not retail sales.
It's a relatively low volume, customised product, likely with high development costs (even if it doesn't fall under medical device regulations, making something battery- powered that you stick in your mouth is gonna need a good safety case). It's also very valuable to those who use it, so the market can support the high price needed to cover development (the per unit costs are likely much smaller: note you can buy two for nearly the same price as one).
Two for the price of one is the tell. Sounds like a phone situation - carrier eats a loss on hardware betting on lifetime revenue. Here they just make margin on unit two instead.
This seems really clever. I don't know anything about what it takes to serve the targeted needs, so I could be wrong. But it's the sort of thing that pops out as really cool and useful, tech that makes the world better.
This looks great for accessibility specifically. My fiancee is partially-sighted, so (while not directly related) I'm extremely supportive of developments in assistive tech. There's a lot of difference to people's lives that can be made.
For me personally - maybe because I'm not a very nice person, or maybe it's an association that many people would make - clever as the pun in the product name is, it does make me think of saying "mousepad" with a lisp. This seems like a non-ideal association.
Somewhat tangentially related, I sometimes use my (above average sized) nose to swipe away notifications on my smartwatch when I'm holding things on both hands and don't feel like putting anything down. My wife always finds this incredibly amusing, but given the length I feel like I might as well use it for something!
The lady mentioning that she uses it to connect with her vibrator certainly wasn't what I was expecting in a glossy product marketing video. Between that and the video call from Rocky's Australian e-girlfriend(?) the video felt like it was sliding into the surreal near the end.
But, I mean, cool. I hope they have fun with it and it improves their lives.
The promotion video popup up in my YT feed yesterday, it has been a long time that I didn't see innovation that helps people to fulfil their passion. I wish them a huge success!
The price seems high for straight to end user sales avoiding the medical regulations needed for use in medical settings. I'm curious why that is and also why you wouldn't design with iso accreditation in mind and get approval. That opens up the market far more.
Super cool. I was thinking about using a ThinkPad trackpoint instead of a touch pad. But as far as I know there is no water resistant trackpoint device.
Surgery robots have a tongue controller. It takes a while to train on that, but when you‘re trained your tongue muscle is the most precise way to control, say, subtle incisions deep inside the brain.
Does it work? There seem to be screenshots and nuanced wordings that implies it's currently more often configured like a gyro mouse with a touch button...
As a replacement for a desktop user's mouse? No. Could write paragraphs about how it's a special niche, and the device shines in that niche.
I've been in the HCI-enthusiast space due to carpal tunnel for a while now. I actually caused myself to have to have the surgery after going all out with QMK mouse keys, which ended up just moving the problem to a different set of fingers. (So maybe not an expert.)
The part I'm not sure is if they have precise tongue location working, of if they have resorted to the pad as mostly just hot corners. I don't have that much doubt about the concept.
Cypress ergo keyboard, mid-90s, had chorded tongue switches for RSI cases. Niche then, niche now. Tongue interfaces keep resurfacing every time carpal tunnel gets bad enough.
I remember reading about tongue based sonar for divers, where the output of the sonar would stimulate electrodes on various parts of the tongue to indicate relative direction.
Had a similar RSI setup years back and switching input modality mid-day actually helps more than you'd think, less fatigue overall. Curious how MouthPad handles false positives from swallowing or talking though.
