NextAxis Design's OVO Swaps the Mouse for an Egg — Promising Natural, Easy, 3D Control

UK-based technology firm NextAxis Design is raising funds to produce a pointing device with a difference: the OVO, an egg-like gadget that uses gesture and balance to control movement in three dimensions.

"OVO is a balance-based input device that works like a mouse, but uses tilt, gesture, and balance instead of sliding," NextAxis Design's Ben Entecott explains of the unusual egg-shaped gadget. "Tilt to move. Gesture to act. Balance to control. It doesn’t force your hand to adapt. It works with how your hand already moves. No rigid posture. Just natural motion. Tilt to move. Rotate to control. Tap to click. Swipe to scroll."

The humble computer mouse has its origins in the trackball, but flipped on its head so that the ball — long-since replaced by optical sensors — rolls along a desk surface under the user's control. Named for its murine appearance — two "ears" as buttons and a "tail" cable which, in a blow to the nomenclature's accuracy, would in most incarnations be coming out of the animal's nose — the mouse has grown from an oddity demonstrated in Douglas Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos" to a basic part of modern computing, though has since been supplanted as the primary method of interaction for most by the capacitive touchscreen.

Build a better mousetrap, the saying goes, and the world will beat a path to your door. NextAxis, then, is hoping the same is true of a mouse — and has ditched the traditional layout for a glowing sci-fi egg. Tilting the egg and rolling it on the edge of its flattened base makes the pointer move; rotating offers another axis of control, while the egg can also track various gestures including finger and thumb taps, lift-and-drop, full rotation, and swiping. Lift the OVO off the desk and it can be used as an "air mouse" — or "air egg."

"OVO is not a concept. It's a working device, tested through multiple prototype iterations and used in real scenarios like design software and media control," Entecott claims. "We validated: real-time 3D tracking; stable cursor control; gesture recognition; wireless performance. The core technology behind its balance-based control system is currently under patent protection (patent pending). This includes: Dynamic Balance System (DBS); motion interpretation algorithms; [and an] interaction model based on equilibrium."

The hardware, meanwhile, is based on the Espressif ESP32-S3 dual-core microcontroller, which provides Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity for wireless use and Wi-Fi for communication with a companion app running on a smartphone. There's a three-axis accelerometer and three-axis magnetometer inside, a capacitive multitouch shell, a 400mAh battery good for a claimed "up to" 80 hours of use per charge. If the company's crowdfunding campaign raises more than $250,000 in total, Entecott has promised to release the "OVO Motion Interface" with real-time streaming of motion and gesture data with an application programming interface (API) tailored for, but not exclusive to, use with the Arduino ecosystem.

The company is now funding the OVO on Kickstarter, with physical rewards starting at $109 for "super early bird" backers; devices are expected to start shipping in December this year, but as with all crowdfunding campaigns fulfillment is not guaranteed.