Skin sensor can work out how you are feeling and could even tell advertisers about it
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Goosebumps can give away exactly how we are feeling - and researchers have found out how to measure them.
Korean researchers have unveiled a stick-on skin sensor that can look for tiny changes in the goosebumps, known as piloerections.
They say the changes can reflect the person's mood - and could be used to determine everything from their experience of music, online ads or even the temperature in the room.
The Goose Bump Detector that can look for tiny changes in the goosebumps, known as piloerections. The wearable sensor measures 20mm x 20mm and is made of plastic
WHAT ARE GOOSE BUMPS?
Goose bumps, also called goose flesh or goose pimples, are the bumps on a person's skin at the base of body hairs.
The develop involuntarily develop when a person is cold or experiences strong emotions such as fear, nostalgia, pleasure, euphoria, awe, admiration and sexual arousal.
Their function in human ancestors was to raise the body's hair, making the ancestor appear larger and scaring off predators.
The reflex of producing goose bumps is known as arasing, piloerection, or the pilomotor reflex.
It is the same response that causes porcupines to raise their quills when threatened.
A team of researchers at KAIST in Daejeon, South Korea is working on a flexible, wearable 20mm x 20mm polymer sensor that can directly measure the degree and occurrence on the skin of goose bumps.
The bumps change in response to sudden changes in body temperature or emotional states.
Described this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, the technology is based on an electronic device known as a coplanar capacitor
'We found that the height of the goose bump and the piloerection duration can be deduced by analyzing obtained capacitance change trace,' explained Young-Ho Cho.
While more work still needs to be done to correlate the physical measurements with emotional states, the work suggests that quantitatively monitoring goose bumps in real-time as an indicator of human physical or emotional status is possible.
'This could pave the way for personalized advertising, music streams or other services informed by directly access to the emotions of the end user,' the team say.
The goosebumps have it: Researchers say the shape as size of goosebumps can give away our emotional state
'In the future, human emotions will be regarded like any typical biometric information, including body temperature or blood pressure,' Cho said.
Cho and colleagues built the sensor using a conductive polymer called PEDOT:PSS for the capacitors, which is flexibile compared to brittle metallic conductive materials.
The capacitors were embedded in a material called Ecoflex 0030.
To test the sensors, the team attached these sensors to the inside of a 28-year old subject's forearm.
The team then had him grab ice cubes to induce a sudden cold shock.
This stimulated piloerection deformed the sensors and causing their capacitance to notably decrease.
The team say their future developments include scaling down the signal processing module and capacitance measurement system to be co-mounted on skin with the sensor.
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