What’s Poppin’™

via Mail Online

It may not be the most inconspicuous gadget, but this pair of headphones wired up to sensors and chips allows a user to control a portable music player just by rolling their eyes.

In a demonstration researcher Hiroyuki Manabe wore the giant headset to show how the sensors detected electrical currents produced by the movements of his eyeballs.

The computer graphic lines in a monitor connected to the headset darted wildly whenever they moved.

Mr Manabe was able to turn up the volume on a digital music player by rolling his eyes, and fast forward a track by jerking his eyes twice to the right.

The new technology from Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo may also enable cell phone cameras to read bar codes to get product information, download music and coupons when the user simply looks at the codes.

"We are working on a cell phone of the future," Masaaki Fukumoto, executive research engineer at NTT said.

NTT DoCoMo believes wearable gadgets will one day be adapted for mobile devices that download music, play video games and allow users to shop online and keep up with their e-mail.

Mr 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.

Another iteration of the technology appears in a wristwatch that can detect the wearer"s thumb and forefinger tapping together to work as a remote controller for such gadgets as a DVD player.

The latest look is everyday and inconspicuous, blending into the routine, Mr Fukumoto insisted - somewhat at odds with the strange appearance the cumbersome headphones made.

When such technology will become real products, if ever, is still unknown, he added.

Thoughts?