Imagine using eye movement or simple hand gestures like tapping fingers to control movements of your gadgets. Eample- Roll your eyes to turn up the volume of a portable music player and tap your fingers to turn on a DVD player. Japan's top mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo, is testing for "wearable" gadgets. In one version, sensors and chips inside headphones detect electrical current produced by movements of the wearer's eyeballs, says Masaaki Fukumoto, executive research engineer at NTT DoCoMo. The company believes wearable control technology will be adapted for mobile devices that download music, play video games and allow users to shop online and keep up with their e-mail.

In a demo held recently, researcher Hiroyuki Manabe wore a giant headset covered with wires to show how computer graphic lines in a monitor connected to the headset darted wildly whenever his eyes moved. He turned up the volume on a digital music player by rolling his eyes, and he jerked his eyes twice to the right to fast forward.

This new technology in the future may allow cell phone cameras to read bar codes used in Japan to get product information, download music and coupons when the user simply looks at the codes, researchers said. Fukumoto showed a wearable cell phone shaped like a ring about the size of a ping-pong ball. When a wearer sticks his fingers in his ears, the sound travels as vibrations through his bones and into his ears, where it is heard as sound again. The company also demoed a wristwatch that can detect the wearer's thumb and forefinger tapping and work as a remote controller for gadgets like a DVD player.

Source