Chorded Keyboard

Project Title Chorded Keyboards for Smart Phones

Project Team Members Tom Sharp (supervised by Steve Furber)

Contact Email sharpt@cs.man.ac.uk

University School of Computer Science, The University of Manchester

Short Description

Chorded keyboards make use of concurrent key presses to type characters from a large alphabet with only a few keys. In court room reporting, chorded keyboards are frequently used to obtain typing speeds upwards of 300 words per minute and this project will investigate the use of such keyboards in smart phones such as the Neo Freerunner.

A 5-key chorded keyboard will be built into the case of a Neo Freerunner, drivers will be written, and tests will be conducted to examine the performance (in terms of speed and accuracy) of the keyboard. It is hoped that the project will provide an antidote to the awkward typing methods currently prevalent amongst mobile devices.