The bar for hands free technology has officially been raised.
Researchers in California have created a cell phone that dials numbers by responding to brain-initiated cues.
Developer Tzyy-Ping Jung, a scientist at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues believe that with a little training, anyone can reach 100 percent accuracy on the system.
"From our experience, anyone can do it," Jung said.
According to the MIT Technology Review:
Like many other such interfaces, Jung's system relies on electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes on the scalp to analyze electrical activity in the brain. An EEG headband is hooked up to a Bluetooth module that wirelessly sends the signals to a Nokia N73 cell phone, which uses algorithms to process the signals.
What sets Jung's research apart is not the brain-controlled feature itself -- that technology has actually existed for years -- but rather the scaled down size of the new device.
Researchers believe that the advanced technology could be used to create safer hands free dialing systems, assist the physically impaired and elderly, or even detect concentration lapses by professionals in high pressure work situations.