Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1.20
The optical mouse
patents—Cursor Control
Device and Imaging
Array—did not issue until
1985; a lifetime of 17 years
after issue means they may
have been in force until 2002
Optical Mouse, imaging the room rather than special paper.” Modern papers on
insect-inspired robot odometry continue to refer to inspiration from my optical
mouse [
12
].
The optical mouse has been described as an inspiration in the topics
Vision Chips
[
31
] and
Smart Cameras
[
4
] among others. Mostly, though, the Xerox mouse was
largely forgotten before the optical mouse was re-invented at Hewlett Packard and
released by their spin-out Agilent in 1999 as a high-resolution high-computation
imager/correlator for tracking the details of arbitrary surfaces, such as the fibers in
paper. They list as one of their 1999 milestones, “Release of Agilent's optical mouse
sensor eliminates need for mouse pads, and allows for creation of a more precise and
longer lasting computer mouse” [
38
]. Microsoft used the Agilent chips in their 1999
Intellimouse, and Apple used them in their 2000 Pro Mouse.
1.9 Conclusion
The optical mouse was a successful union of ideas in VLSI design, vision, and neural
networks. In hindsight, it was a smart camera and an embedded vision system before
those concepts were invented. It was a silicon retina before Carver Mead coined
