Skeleton Keys - Hand Vibrations (via Smartphone)

Wow...talk about "Keyless Entry" ....this is really cool.

Hope it comes to market. This tech could be applied to cars in customizing settings on individual drivers as they get into/approach a car and customize settings automatically to each driver's liking.....lots of ideas from this tech.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/unlocking-doors-signals-sent-your-smartphone-door-through-your-skeleton

Doors Unlock With Keyed Vibrations Sent From Your Smartphone Through Your Bones

By Clay DillowPosted 04.23.2012 at 4:02 pm11 Comments

Unlocking Doors With a Simple Touch athena via Flickr

It gives the term skeleton key a whole new meaning: a prototype system from AT&T Labs that beams a unique vibration through a user’s bones to be picked up by a receiver in a door handle, automatically unlocking the door at the touch of the handle. Using piezoelectric transducers, the system could someday be embedded in smartphones or wristwatches to create doors that automatically unlock when the right person touches them and stay firmly dead-bolted when anyone else tries to gain entry.

In the future, in other words, you are your own set of keys. According to InnovationNewsDaily, the system works via frequencies that humans can’t feel but could hear in a very quiet room. These acoustic signals travel from one piezoelectric transducer through human bones much the way sound waves vibrate through the skull and inner ear to enable our sense of hearing. The vibration travels straight through the body including through the hand, which can impart the signal to anything it touches. Put another piezoelectric transducer in the door handle, and the door can identify the person touching the handle and grant entry appropriately.

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TAGS

Technology, Clay Dillow, AT&T, military,piezoelectrics, security, smartphones

But it’s not just the raw acoustic signal that the door is analyzing. The brains behind this prototype key have found that different skeletons--different bone densities and lengths, etc.--degrade the acoustic signals in different ways. That means that in future iterations of their system, only the right combination of signal and skeleton would open the door. In other words, someone couldn’t just steal your phone and use it to open your car door or your apartment--without your unique skeletal fingerprint added to the signal, the door would remain closed. And it might text or email you to let you know someone tried to gain entry without the right key.

All that is pretty neat, especially considering that the applications for this wouldn’t have to stop at door locks. Other individual-specific implements could be rigged to recognize different people, so a car shared by a family could automatically adjust the driver’s seat and mirrors when a new person stepped into the car, or a computer could switch to the right parental settings depending on whether Dad or Junior is touching the keyboard. More about this over at InnovationNewsDaily.

NEW YORK, NY — Brian Amento gripped the deadbolted door handle on the display next to him and with a click, the door unlocked at his touch. In his other hand, he was pinching a small metal disk called a piezoelectric transducer — like the ones used in guitar pickups — that was wired to his smartphone. The phone sent a digital key, identifying Amento as the homeowner, through his body and into the door. 

Amento is a computer scientist at AT&T Labs. He talked with InnovationNewsDaily this morning (April 19) at a research fair AT&T held for reporters. Though for this display, the piezoelectric transducer connected to Amento's phone with a large wire, eventually such sensors would be embedded directly in phones or perhaps wristwatches, Amento said. People's smartphones would become their door keys, too. 

Brian Amento's phone, with a piezoelectric transducer wired to it.
CREDIT: TechMediaNetwork

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In this prototype, Amento's phone produced several frequencies of vibrations that humans can't feel, but can hear, if the room is very quiet. In other words, as Amento said, "It's an acoustic signal." 

The frequencies travel from the phone and through the skeleton, in the way that sound waves vibrate bones in the skull and inner ear. At the other end, the door handle has another piezoelectric transducer to detect the vibrations coming through a person's hand. If this technology comes to market, different phones and door handles would have different vibration signatures that need to match for the door to unlock.

Amento switched the settings on his phone, demonstrating that his demo door would also open for the vibrations from a friend's phone. On the other hand, it would send an alert to the homeowner if a stranger touched the door handle. 

Amento and his colleagues think they can add another layer of security to the smartphone key, too — one that's based on the unique properties of people's skeletons. Because of differences in bone lengths and density, people's skeletons should carry vibrations differently, they think. "If the signal goes through my body, it degrades in a different way than if it goes through your body," Amento said. Among the five people he has tested, all of their skeletons transmitted vibrations differently. Of course, he'll have to test more people to check if everyone is unique, but if that's true, then the smartphone key will only work when the right person is using it.

The key is still in its prototype stage, Amento said, so he couldn't say when people might be able to unlock their front doors with their own unique cell phone vibes. Once such systems work, however, people could start transmitting much more than their door keys through their bones. Amento and his colleagues are also working to see if people can exchange contact information just by shaking hands. The data would flow from one phone, through one person's skeleton, into the next person's and finally, into the recipient's phone. 

They also think a person's unique vibes might help other smart devices identify them. A piezoelectric couch, for example, could sense who's sitting there and offer her favorite channels. A piezoelectric car driver's seat could identify the driver and adjust the mirrors accordingly. 

You can follow InnovationNewsDaily staff writer Francie Diep on Twitter @franciediep. Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation, or on Facebook.