Control Your Phone with a Flick of Your Nose

Human interface devices come in many forms: keyboards, touchscreens, and even full-body tracking with gadgets like Kinect. Even the ubiquitous mouse was a major advancement when it was first introduced. But, one way of interacting with devices that we’ve never seen before (or frankly even considered) is with your nose.

Now that possibility, that we never knew we needed, is a reality. An international team of computer scientists from South Korea, Japan, Scotland, and the United States have created a pair of glasses that give you the ability to control a device by touching your nose. The way in which you touch your nose determines what the response on your device is.

You might, for example, flick your nose to skip to the next song playing on your phone. Or, rub your nose to clear your notifications. Even just a gentle nudge could be used to do something like call your best friend.

The concept of touching your nose to interact with your phone might sound silly and impractical, but it does have real world uses. The idea is that you can perform quick and simple tasks without being obvious about it, or having to take your phone out of your pocket. For certain social and professional situations, this could be very useful; there’s no sense in interrupting a nice dinner date just to send a call to voicemail.