Active bioacoustic measurement for human-to-human skin contact area detection

This paper describes a method to acquire the human-to-human skin contact area quantitatively. "Touch" is human´s fundamental communication and is reckoned to have positive effects physically and emotionally. Indeed, physical stimulation is applied for clinical treatments for mental disorders. However, there is no existing technique to quantitatively measure the amount of touch (area, position, time length, etc.). Our method employs an active bioacoustics measurement technique to quantify the skin-to-skin contact area. A proposed system consists of a vibration unit and a sensing unit. A couple of users wear the units respectively. When they touch with each other, acoustic (elastic) waves propagate through their bodies via the skin contact zone. We consider that the amplitude of the waves which reach the sensing unit depends on the contact zone area. A result of our fundamental experiment supports our expectation.