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As if advertisers and social media sites didn't know enough about us already, the better to target their messages, South Korean researchers have developed a polymer sensor that measures goose bumps on human skin in an attempt to determine an emotional state. The research could lead to ever more personalized advertising, music services, maybe even a personal message from Mark Zuckerberg to soldier on, depending on how you're feeling.

Norbert Sparrow

July 7, 2014

1 Min Read
Polymer sensor reveals human feelings by measuring goose bumps

The flexible, wearable 20-x-20-mm polymer sensor developed at KAIST, a research university in Daejeon, South Korea, measures the degree and occurrence of goose bumps on the skin. It achieves this by means of an electronic device, known as a coplanar capacitor, that detects goose bumps through a linear relation between the deformation of the sensor and decrease of the capacitance.

The researchers built the 1.2-micrometer-thick sensor using PEDOT:PSS, a conductive polymer, for the capacitors and embedding them in a silicon substrate, Ecoflex 0030, via a multistep spin-coating process. The technique gives them a spiral shape and coplanar structure.

While more work still needs to be done to correlate physical measurements with emotional states, the research suggests that quantitatively monitoring goose bumps in real-time as an indicator of human physical or emotional status is possible. "In the future, human emotions will be regarded like any typical biometric information, including body temperature or blood pressure," said researcher Young-Ho Cho.

The research has been published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

About the Author(s)

Norbert Sparrow

Editor in chief of PlasticsToday since 2015, Norbert Sparrow has more than 30 years of editorial experience in business-to-business media. He studied journalism at the Centre Universitaire d'Etudes du Journalisme in Strasbourg, France, where he earned a master's degree.

www.linkedin.com/in/norbertsparrow

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