Researchers Design Locks that Can be Opened with Certain Hand Gestures

Researchers from Taiwan have developed a machine that reads people's hand gestures and thereby permits them to open doors by waving a few fingers:

"In the future, you won't have to worry about losing or forgetting your keys," said Tsai Yao-pin, who teaches at the Technology and Science Institute of Northern Taiwan.

At the heart of the technology developed by his team is a chip that can detect movement in three dimensions, as used in Nintendo's Wii video game console, he said.

The technology allows users to easily unlock their doors by repeating a gesture preset in the sensor, according to Tsai.

You'll just have to be careful about your body language.

Link -via TechCrunch | Photo by Flickr user Eddi 07 - Free Stock

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And most people will use the gesture of "turning a key in a lock" -- because that's so simple nobody would think of it, right?

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Something I thought about when I got my new Acer Liquid MT. It allows me to use an "Unlock Pattern" instead of a password. All I have to do is draw the pattern with my finger, but as other commenters have said, this makes it less secure because it is easy to see what I am drawing. And I can only draw something that fits into a 4x8 grid without repeating the same node twice, so my designs are bound to be simple.

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The default setting for the lock is the raising of the middle finger, which works after you've tried every other gesture and finally gave up in frustration.

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When I go into a friend's house, I'm not automatically granted unfettered access, thereafter. But with new GestureKeys, it's 'see it, and you can get in!'.

So, the gesture could be the key, but you also will want authentication (e.g., a voice print) to ensure you're authorized to use *that* key. And once you have the authentication method, well...what's the use of the gesturekey, again?