We wrote a short paper on our experience using 3D mice to control robot manipulators. 3D mice offer full 6DOF control in a cheap, widely available, broadly compatible, and mechanically robust package. Every roboticist working on manipulation should keep one around, and this is the paper you’ll read when you need to get the implementation right. It’s a useful resource, but you don’t have to take my word for it: the paper was recognized with the Best Paper Award for short contributions.

I began looking at 3D mice usability while working at NVIDIA, but the code I developed there is tied to the Omniverse ecosystem. This paper’s implementation is ROS-ready.