keyboard gloves

As completion for a head-mounted display, I envisioned keyboard gloves, a complete replacement for a conventional keyboard. Letters are typed by touching fingers together, different combinations result in the simulation of different keystrokes. Finally, by using Keyboard gloves, one could move around freely while operating a portable computer. Even typing while hands within pockets would be possible, as each hand can operate independently.

premise

connection points on the inside (left) and backside (right)

connection points:

• green, blue and pink with orange
• green with yellow (blue and pink would be too hard to reach)

number of combinations

I would suggest to use the inside 32 for letters, as they are most easy to reach, the sidewise 29 for numbers and punctuation marks, leaving the backside 14 for function keys. Bear in mind, we are only talking about one hand so far!

realization

For first experiments, a conventional keyboard controller and woolen gloves have been used. Contacts have been sewn in. Wires connected each contact with the controller. With all the wires and the contacts, wearing the gloves was very uncomfortable. Not only that the washers used as contacts where inflexible, but also the yarn, used to fix them to the glove, troubled contacting. It would need something much more soft, maybe glued to the fabric itself, where also the cables are part of the fabric.

Problem of using default keyboard controller.

Additionally, we ran into another problem as described below and depicted on the left side.

Using a default keyboard controller means to map each key 1:1 from the source to its specific contact, but in our case, as we use three contacts on the thumb, three sources would be needed to allow one “key” to have three different meanings.

There are several solutions, the most simple one would be to reduce inputs to only one, resulting in 16 inside, 11 sidewise and 8 backside, i.e. still 35 on one hand. This would only allow to perform alphanumerical input.

To keep the options of more keys, we tried to change the keyboard layout and connected the second and third input via shift-key and ctrl-key, but this solution did not work with all programs, as some seemed to interfere with the keyboard hardware somehow directly, bypassing the keyboard layout mapping of the operating system  (Microsoft Windows in our case). An addition problem was, that wearing gloves over a longer period of time, did not feel so comfortable, especially in summertime!

conclusion

A solution must be found, as computers become small enough to put them in ones pocket and head-mounted displays are available, as well as eye tracking as replacement for a pointing device. We are only lacking some unobtrusive, I suggest wearable, input device, as handy and efficient as a keyboard. Additionally some kind of flexible touchpad could be attached backside of the glove as pointing device.