Engineers at Michigan State University working with folks at Bell Labs have developed a sensor that can detect the movement of a person’s mouth while being attached near the shoulder. The idea is to be able to measure people’s eating and drinking habits in a non-intrusive way, information that may end up being useful for managing eating disorders, assessing a person’s social behavior, and improving already existing data obtained from other wearables.

The technology inside the HeadScan device is like a radar for your jaw, sending out radio waves from two antennas that bounce back from the skull. The receiver measures differences in movement between successive radio pings, interpreting the movement as chewing or talking.

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