Concept glasses turn your nose into digital control pad

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In the world where people have strong attachments to their smart devices, answering a phone call or reading a message during a meeting is common, but rude. We, however, might soon be able to carry on with all the “impolite” interactions by a mere scratch on the nose.

A pair of glasses, co-developed by researchers from South Korea’s KAIST University, the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and Georgia Tech in the US as an experiment, allows wearers to “control a wearable computer without calling attention to the user in public”.

Switching songs with one push on the nose. /Gif via Juyoung Lee

Electrooculography (EOG) sensors are embedded in the bridge and nose pads, which help the glasses detect actions of flicking, pushing and rubbing on the nose to achieve various interactions with digital devices, such as checking emails on a laptop and switching songs on a smartphone.

The system is named “Itchy Nose”.

Sensors for the system, commonly adopted for detecting eye and head movement, are used to measure electric potentials of flesh around the nose in this experiment, said a tech blog the Verge.

Getting the system to identify intentional touches from unintentional ones is one of the biggest challenges for the team.

Photo via Juyoung Lee

“Certain gestures like rubbing are very distinct and almost never false trigger. Other gestures, like the push gesture, have more false triggers per hour,” Hui-Shyong Yeo, one of the researchers told the Verge.

“There is a trade-off between how consistent the users must be with the control gesture versus how many false triggers the system will have.”