Sneaky & Convenient Controls: Eye movement and teeth clenching...

Today we have a couple of very unpressable buttons, since these are buttons that, well, you don't press. Instead, they're two very usable (if a bit bizarre) new ways to control your products: teeth clenching and eye movement. The teeth-clenching control is being developed by researchers at Osaka University (and comes to us via Engadget), and the eye-movement by Stanford University (again through Engadget). In both cases, these controls require minimal effort - compared to reaching out to a button, either clenching your teeth or darting your eyes take less time and energy. It's like steering-wheel-mounted audio controls taken to the next level: instead of just bringing the control closer to where your hand is anyway, it makes the control something that your body is always ready to do. Nice!

In addition to the convenience, these each offer a increasingly valuable commodity in the information age: privacy! It's tougher to track (or even notice) teeth-clenching or eye-darting patterns than a finger punching in a PIN code. And the more low-key you can be about skipping to the next song on an iPod, the less likely you are to be caught not paying attention.

Next step, telepathic controls!