Monday, 25 March 2013 11:28

Bioelectrics used as a new form of identification...

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Fingerprints have been used as a form of identification for a long time now.  In more modern applications, we have recently seen print scanners come into the mainstream in everything from PCs to USB flash drives to mice and other peripherals.  As amazing and useful as those security devices are, a team at Disney Research in Pittsburgh PA is trying to take the method one step further and identify you not by your fingerprint, but by your touch itself.

Until now, touchscreens could only determine contact, a kind of binary on-or-off signal, and anyone or anything that met the criteria for identification was the same.  Disney Research has made a touchscreen that can not only detect touch but recognize different users.

The device, dubbed Touche, sends a current through the user’s body and identifies them through differences in the body’s impedance of that current.  Every person’s body has differences that change how it will affect the current, thus creating a unique impedance signature for that individual.  

Touche is not limited to touch screens, either.  The team sees it being used in the future in items like doorknobs and automobile controls.  Like most of the most amazing new technology, Touche is still in development but promises to turn a lot more of our world interactive.

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Read 2360 times Last modified on Saturday, 30 March 2013 08:43

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