Disney Research (which presumably has lots of mice) created a new sensing system called Touché that can sense a wide variety of human hand and body interactions, not just touch screens, but in all sorts of objects—even liquids.
It's pretty amazing. Most capacitive sensing (think: your smartphone or trackpad) only operates on one frequency. Touché sweeps over a range of frequencies and uses it to suck down more data about how an object is being touched. It can even tell what kind of actions your body is taking, tacking gestures in mid-air.
The really, really, crazy stuff is still conceptual—like using the body itself as an input device, or your doorknob as a controller. But I love this kind of stuff. Gestures are so obviously the future of input. Bring it. [Touché via New Scientist via Stellar Interesting]