New Gadget Allows You To Control Your Smartphone With Your Tongue

It’s a given that you can’t imagine life without a smartphone now; everything is becoming linked and you’ll see people frantically typing or swiping on their smartphones to make transactions or to close business deals.
However, one can’t always use smartphones and then there are times when you need to use the smartphone but your fingers are busy elsewhere. Japanese scientists have come up with a solution to this problem and it employs the use of tongue to control your smartphone.

Welcome to Osaka Prefecture University in Japan where a team has managed to come up with a device, which is capable of controlling gadgets by measuring the tongue pressure through the cheek. Depending upon the movement of the tongue, a number of functions can be carried out on the smartphone. The key idea behind the development of this gadget is to allow people to make use of their devices even when they’re in a situation where they are required to be hands-free.

In words of Kai Kunze, team member, ‘The tongue is a well-developed muscle capable of fine-grain movements – so we thought it should be good for control interactions.’ The intended users can be skiers and motorcyclists who can use their smartphone/device without employing their hands. The test phase of the device involved 6 volunteers who were connected to a pad that had 64 pressure sensing elements. The pad was placed on cheeks and six tongue gestures were tested which included; a click (push with tongue), swipe up, down, left and right. A total of 300 attempts were recorded with a recognition accuracy of 98%,

Professor Kunze said; ‘My personal motivation here was skiing. I like to check factors like my speed while on the slope, yet it’s quite cumbersome to take out a smartphone and use a touch-screen in the cold.’

The gadget isn’t the first of its kind though; we’ve already witnessed such devices that allow the tongue to control them, however, this would be the first to pair tongue movement with smartphones.