New user interfaces such as touch and voice recognition are trying to change how we interact with computers.
But how about controlling devices with just your breath? To scroll, pucker up your mouth and blow steadily. To click, blow a forceful puff like you are trying to put out a candle.
“We blow at stuff all the time — blow candles, blow bubbles, blow at dust,” says Pierre Bonnat, CEO of Zyxio, a company that is creating “breath-enabled interfaces.” Zyxio showed its idea at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Wacky as the idea may be, Zyxio promises to have it in products this year.
The popularity of touchscreens has led human computer interaction beyond the traditional mouse and keyboard. Researchers are trying to find “natural” ways of interacting with computers so devices can move beyond the home and office. Voice recognition, for instance, lets users dictate commands to their devices rather than click buttons.
Zyxio’s system has a single MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical System) chip that senses pressure levels in the open space, at a distance of up to 7.8 inches (20 centimeters) from the mouth.
“The MEMS is small, unobtrusive and capable of recognizing a few Pascals (a unit of pressure),” says Bonnat, citing a common unit of pressure. “If you cough or shake it, it doesn’t react.”
The breath-analyzing sensor can be integrated into any hardware, including headsets, mobile phones and laptops. The sensor can detect kinetic energy and movement caused by the expulsion of human breath can generate an electrical, optical or magnetic signal. This signal is communicated to a processing module, which — with the help of the company’s algorithm — translates it into a command that can be recognized by the computer.
The algorithm picks up gusts intentionally generated by the user and discards surrounding breeze.
“70 percent of the technology is in the software,” says Bonnat. “The MEMS is just the enabler.”
Blowing puffs of air with enough precision to get the cursor on a laptop screen to exactly where you want is easier and more intuitive than you think. But there is definitely a learning curve.
That shouldn’t hold up the idea, says Bonnat. The mind can direct the mouth to blow in the direction it wants, he says. For proof, watch a 5-year old blow out just a few candles out on a cake. A Zyxio video shows how the breath interface can control a laptop.
Importantly, the breath-enabled interface isn’t designed for detailed interactions, says Bonnat, who imagines that you’ll use it instead to quickly scroll pages of information at an information kiosk, or to answer a call or turn off the radio in a car without doing anything more difficult than blowing a quick puff of air.
The Zyxio MEMS system will start shipping in the second quarter of the year, says Bonnat. Among the first products to use it will be a gaming headset.
Photo: Pierre Bonnat, Zyxio CEO, controls a laptop using his breath. Photo by Priya Ganapati/Wired.com.
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