Right now the entire mobile industry is in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress and the coincidently-timed International Pick-Pocket Festival. There’s plenty of big news, but it’s the smaller stands where the magic is often to be found…
How about some eye-controlled earphones…? Yes. I said eye controlled.
The team at NTT Docomo have created some witch-craft* that enables their headphones to detect the direction the wearer is looking in… This can then control an MP3 player - switching tracks and starting/stopping playback - leaving your hands free to do… well… anything that doesn’t require you to look around much.
* May actually be science, not witch-craft.
For those with a penchant for the detail…
… [Dr. Masaaki Fukumoto, Executive Research Engineer at NTT DOCOMO's Frontier Technology Research Group] has adapted a medical device for measuring eye response, called an electrooculogram (EOG), which uses sensors to measure the electrical potential of the cornea and track where the eye is moving.
So… that’s cleared it up. The NTT Docomo site has more details.