Sesame’s Touch-Free Smartphone is a Boon for the Disabled, Operates Through Head Motions

It is quite evident that smartphones have become extensively useful and capable day-by-day. We have achieved so much as a society in terms of communication. However, there is still a section in our society which is not familiar with the revolution of communication in the form of smartphones, and that is physically disabled people.

Oded Ben Dov and Giora Livne, founders of Sesame Enable, want to change that. Sesame Enable is an Israel-based startup that has spent past two years developing the Sesame Phone. This phone can be controlled through voice or just with head movements.

Dov and Livne, using a Google Nexus 5 for hardware, crafted Sesame Phone with complex software that allows disabled users to use the phone with simple movements and commands. “Smartphones bring the world to us. But for people with disabilities, current smartphone technology falls short,” Sesame wrote on its Indiegogo crowdfunding page. “Sesame is the first smartphone designed for people with limited or no use of their hands. Offering touch-free accessibility in a small, mobile, and elegant form factor.”

This software works only with the Nexus 5 for now, but the duo is already working to bring it to other smartphones in the future. The software essentially uses a combination of facial recognition, gesture recognition and voice recognition to give users complete control over the phone. A cursor floats on the screen of the smartphone, follows user’s head movements which are tracked by the front camera of the phone.

Users can click and open apps with the help of simple pre-defined head gestures. Also, voice commands can be used to carry out the task, suiting the need of every user. The company has recently launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise an amount of $30,000, needed to continue developing the phone.