EnhancedTouchX: Smart Bracelets for Augmenting Interpersonal Touch Interactions

Abstract

EnhancedTouchX, a bracelet-type interpersonal body area network device, not only detects but also quantifies interpersonal hand-to-hand touch interactions. Without any wired connection, it can identify the direction and gestures of a touch. The developed device can connect to an external device via Bluetooth Low Energy for monitoring and logging where, when, how long, who, and how the touch interactions occurred. These daily augmented touch interactions provided by such contextual information would offer a variety of applications to facilitate social interactions. Our experiment, conducted with several pairs of participants, demonstrates that the devices can identify the direction of a touch (from one initiating the touch (active touch) to the one being touched (passive touch)) with 95% accuracy. In addition, the devices are also capable of identifying four types of touch gestures with 85% accuracy using a simple threshold classifier.