A massive part of the push for the ever-growing technology industry is undoubtedly the want for the most convenience possible. So how about some wireless earbuds that can unlock your phone via reading your ear canal.
A team out of the University at Buffalo noticed that most of youth that was walking around campus started adopting wireless headphones, which made them wonder what else could be done with this technology. Computer scientist Zhanpeng Jin who is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences said "We have so many students walking around with speakers in their ears. It led me to wonder what else we could do with them."
So Jin and his team took the earbuds and came up with something that has been called EarEcho. EarEcho is a biometric tool that uses modified wireless earbuds to authenticate users' smartphones, which is done through the reading of the users unique geometrical ear canal. According to this month's Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies journal, the prototype EarEcho had a roughly 95% success rate on the users it was tested on.