Days of wearable gadgets are not far away

Yokosuka, Japan: Rolling your eyes to turn up the volume of a portable music player and tapping your fingers to turn on a DVD player are among technologies Japan's top mobile carrier is testing for "wearable" gadgets.

In one version, sensors and chips inside headphones detect electrical current produced by movements of the wearer's eyeballs, says Masaaki Fukumoto, executive research engineer at NTT DoCoMo.

"We are working on a cellphone of the future," he said at a suburban Tokyo research center.

NTT DoCoMo believes wearable control technology will be adapted for mobile devices that download music, play video games and allow users to shop online and keep up with their e-mail.

In a demonstration on Tuesday for The Associated Press, researcher Hiroyuki Manabe wore a giant headset covered with wires to show how computer graphic lines in a monitor connected to the headset darted wildly whenever his eyes moved.

He turned up the volume on a digital music player by rolling his eyes, and he jerked his eyes twice to the right to fast forward.

The new technology may also enable cellphone cameras to read bar codes used in Japan to get product information, download music and coupons when the user simply looks at the codes, researchers said.