King’s Assembly: a very sophisticated name for a mouse. But then, this is a very sophisticated mouse.
Like any good butcher, the Assembly makes use of your whole hand. It finds the space to stuff 30 keyboard keys under your fingers, a degree of joystick-style control beneath your thumb – and leaves mouse control to your palm. And it isn’t nearly so clumsy about it as you might expect.
With every input managed by one limb, you’ll be free to occupy the other with a second Assembly, or whatever extraneous task you can think of. Not that, though. Good grief.
The Assembly’s creators, Solid Art Labs, wanted to end the “frustration” of switching between mouse and keyboard by merging the two. They studied the “shape and contours” of the human hand and its utility for moving mice, tapping keyboards and bending joysticks. And they consequently developed a contoured palm rest which could be controlled with the same degree of accuracy as a mouse – without the use of your digits.
To that, they attached a curved QWERTY keyboard and an analogue stick.
“The palm rest is designed to allow unobstructed movement of your fingers and thumb while still providing enough leverage in all directions to maintain precise mouse control,” they write.
“With fingers and thumbs liberated we put controls within easy reach so you can type, use hotkeys, hold buttons down and manipulate joysticks while accurately controlling the mouse.”
It’s a neat-looking prototype that now seems destined for distribution after a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign. And the extra funds will enable the development of wireless functionality that’ll make the Assembly compatible with practically any Bluetooth device, including phones and consoles.
But I have to be honest: typing is a rare enough occurrence in most PC games that I’m not particularly frustrated by the core problem the Assembly purports to solve. 1,129 backers were, though. How about you?
Thanks to Craig Pearson for this one.