Your Hands = Your Personal Key

The latest system from AT & T made ​​by human hands into a key that can unlock the doors automatically. With the vibrations through the bones of man, a door can be locked automatically. 

Piezoelectric transducers are planned to be installed in the smartphone or a watch can lock and unlock the doors automatically when touched by their owners. 

This system also makes a foreigner can not open the door that was not hers. That way, the private key of the door is ourselves. 

According to the Innovation News Daily, the system works through a frequency that humans can not be felt, however, can be heard in the room is very quiet. Acoustic signal is moving from a piezoelectric transducer with human bones. Vibrations spread throughout the body, including the hand that can provide a signal directly to anything it touches. 

Another piezoelectric transducer embedded in the handle, the door can analyze the people who touched the handle. The prototype of the keys that have been tried states that everyone has a different bone, so that the signal is given is different. 

So, although we watch or a smartphone is stolen, the thief may not be able to break into the house. "The key is still in prototype stage, we do not know when this technology can be realized," said researchers from AT & T, Brian Mento.

AT&T researcher Brian Amento stands next to a door he's rigged to open at his touch. (Picture from: http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/)

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."

Brian Amento's phone, with a piezoelectric transducer wired to it. (Picture from: http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/)

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. *** [RIF | INNOVATION NEWS DAILY | PIKIRAN RAKYAT 10052012]

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