Sony patents 'body-wired' headphones

One of Sony's research labs has come up with a way to eradicate the problem of tangled headphone cables once and for all: get rid of the cables.

Unlike traditional wireless headphones, however, this one doesn't use radio waves or a Bluetooth connection. Instead, they use the wearer's own body to conduct the sound signal from the music player to the headphones.

The listener's body is used as a capacitor - the New Scientist blog reports - which carries a small electrical charge. The player sends its signal to a cloth pad somewhere on the body, and the signal is carried from there to a pair of similar pads in the headphones, which convert the signal to sound waves.

The amount of electrical current used is so small that there should be no danger to the wearer, the company says. A patent for the technology has been filed with the US Patent Office by Sony's Tokyo Research Lab.