A research team has developed a sensor capable of measuring goosebumps on the human body in real time.<\/p>\n
The device uses a stick-on transparent conductive polymer to quantify how big the bumps are and how long they last.<\/p>\n
It works by recording a drop in the sensor’s capacitance – its ability to store an electrical charge – caused by it being deformed by the buckling of the skin’s surface.<\/p>\n
The engineers say it could be used to study changes in people’s emotions.<\/p>\n
The work was carried out at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and details have been published in\u00a0the Applied Physics Letters journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n The article explains that the thin, flexible, square sensor, whose sides are about 2cm (0.8in) long, was tested on the arm of a subject who was asked to grab ice cubes to induce the reaction.<\/p>\n Although, by its nature, this involved a response to physical stimuli, the researchers noted that other scientists had previously shown that goosebumps could be used to deduce changes in a subject’s emotional state brought on by music, movies and other causes.<\/p>\n “In the future, human emotions will be regarded like any typical biometric information, including body temperature or blood pressure,” Prof Young Ho-cho told the journal.<\/p>\n Emotional triggers<\/p>\n Although more work needs to be done to correlate the measurements with specific emotional states, and only certain strong reactions might result in goosebumps,\u00a0the journal still suggested<\/a>\u00a0the technology could ultimately be used to create kit to personalise adverts, music and other services based on the user’s reactions.<\/p>\n Such an idea is not new.<\/p>\n At one time video games developer Valveexperimented with developing a controlle<\/a>r fitted with sensors to monitor players’ physiological states, suggesting this could be used to change gameplay depending on whether it deduced they felt afraid, bored or engaged.<\/p>\n