Goosebumps detector can reveal emotional state

The flexible, wearable 20mm x 20mm polymer sensor was developed by a team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon to directly measure the degree and occurrence on the skin of goose bumps (a reaction also called piloerection), which is caused by sudden changes in body temperature or emotional states.

In use, the sensor could be used to quantitatively gauge a consumer’s real-time physical and emotional response to stimuli including music, adverts or room temperature.

Described in Applied Physics Letters, the technology is said to be based on a coplanar capacitor and detects goose bumps by virtue of a linear relationship between the deformation of the sensor and the decrease of the capacitance.

‘We found that the height of the goose bump and the piloerection duration can be deduced by analysing obtained capacitance change trace,’ team member Young-Ho Cho said in a statement.

While more work still needs to be done to correlate such 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, which could pave the way for personalised advertising, music streams or other services informed by directly access to the emotions of the end user.