Mobile phones should be accessible to everyone, including those with varying types of disability that could prevent them from operating it using their hands or through speech.
Four years ago, researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan developed a machine that could successfully read the mind of a user to repeat numbers and some single syllable words.
This breakthrough in technology was developed to help people who would otherwise be unable to communicate with the outside world.
This represented a huge breakthrough in technology and over the years we’ve seen the potential for prosthetic arms to be controlled through brain activity. One such example is the USA’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and its brain-controlled prosthetic arm for upper limb amputees.
Research by the Japanese scientists was going so well that they suggested a simple app for your smartphone could be available in five years time. It’s been about four years now, but there hasn’t been much news about smartphone apps that can read your mind that we’ve come across.
It was said that “KDDI’s R&D labs has developed combined fun and science into an Android-powered device which can read your brain waves during playing. This device works via wireless. This wireless device embraces the head, clips onto an earlobe. During a 30-second test the state of the brain are sent to an gaming app installed on an Android smartphone which displays displays a chart that graphs concentration and meditation. This application also can without any game. It is not available in market yet for sale. It is just on research stage.”
The reason we’ve been thinking about this again is because of your recent concept phone that we would like to make as accessible to as many people as possible. If we could incorporate any kind of technology to help users who may have difficulty typing or swiping, we’d love to look into how we could do that.
Hopefully in the next year, we’ll hear some good news about the smartphone app they are developing.
Stay tuned and we’ll keep you updated on the latest developments.