People who own personal electronic devices such as a mobile phone or PDA won't have to struggle with tiny, hard-to-see display screens thanks to a team of Scottish researchers from the University of Glasgow who are exploring a new technology that will enable people to interact with mobile computers using 3-D sound and gestures.

While talking on a mobile phone seems effortless, text messaging or Web browsing can be difficult and cause a person to slow down or even stop moving.

Stephan Brewster, who is leading the research initiative, said this is because although some interfaces are better than others when on the move, pushing small buttons on a display screen is simply not one of them.

To offset this problem, Brewster, along with colleagues Rod Murray Smith, John Williamson and Georgios Marentakis, concentrated on using other senses to better communicate with electronic devices.

“We've got five great senses; we shouldn't have to rely on vision all the time,” Brewster said.

The solution: audio clouds. Operating similar to a desktop, where each application has its own window, an audio cloud consists of each phone application occupying a different surrounding audio space. With a mere wave of the hand or a head nod in a certain direction, any desired function could be activated.

“You have a space around you or a cloud of audio that the applications sit in, enabling you to interact with them,” he said.

For utilizing the gesture-recognition program, accelerometers are used to measure the movement of the device. They record movement into the device to correspond to specific commands.

Brewster compares the technology to a cocktail party, in that a person can shift focal points from one interaction to the next without difficulty, until the one that is most interesting is found.

“The good thing about gestures is that they can be done eyes free and with any part of the body,” he said, allowing individuals to be fully engrossed in their electronic devices but still conscious about their surroundings.

Although research is under way, the technology itself is already in existence and so is the actual hardware needed to use the gestures and audio. The electronic devices necessary for compatibility with such features, however, still need work.

“We are trying to persuade handset manufacturers to incorporate expansion capabilities so the technology can be applied,” Brewster said.

For instance, electronic companies and manufactures (such as Nokia and Motorola) have already been contacted.

“We are getting smaller hand-held computers to do more,” he said, “so we need to find ways to use that functionality in our every day lives.”