A swish of the foot to open a car trunk is commonplace. Now researchers are looking at how facial movements might be used as controllers.

While the world runs on smartphones, they aren’t always easy to pull out when something needs to get done. Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD) in Rostock, Germany, has identified facial gesture technology EarFieldSensing (EarFS) as one that has a lot of potential in this area, according to Phys.org.

IGD has been busy evaluating systems that track blinks, facial shifts and mouth movements. One takeaway from the consumer research—technology that was worn on one’s face was uncomfortable and socially unacceptable while tech that went into one’s ear worked well in the practical everyday world.

“The sensors cannot be interfered with by other movements of the body, such as vibrations during walking or external interferences,” Denys Matthies, scientist at the Fraunhofer IGD, observed. “To solve this problem, an additional reference electrode was applied to the earlobe which records the signals coming from outside.”

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This kind of thinking has been tried before, though more often with actual physical gestures. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volvo and Volkswagen, to name a few, have all released a version of gesture controls, whether a foot-swipe activated car trunk or a hands-free control of music.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.brandchannel.com