In a society that keeps evolving and getting faster day-by-day, even short amounts of time acquire value and importance. Technology progresses fast, and the new achievements allowed the creation of services and tools that became part of the ordinary life. Meet the new sensor stickers that allowed new ways of interactions between humans and technology.

A classic situation that helps to understand the relationship among people, time and technology is the one concerning business meetings. Not only these events usually require the support of technologies to implement and maximise audio-visual communication, but also, sometimes, technology plays a key role to maintain stable communications and avoid interferences. This last aspect, led to the creation of tools, such as smart watches, that simplify basic operations to avoid wasting even small amounts of time. A smart watch is essentially a watch that can be connected to technologic devices that allows the user to perform operation, such as call rejections or text reading, on the watch itself and avoiding the burden of checking the devices too often.

However, as explained, even though the choice of a smart watch allows interesting and comfortable pros, the need of wearing a watch itself may be considered a con for somebody who is not used to it. To overcome those difficulties and allow freedom from intermediary devices, some researches aimed to develop flexible silicone rubber controls with pressure sensitive stickers that can be applied to the body fitting snugly to the skin. Through those stickers, the users can basically interact with the devices allowing their remote control as well as freedom in time and space. According to the kind of sticker used, the application of pressure could for instance adjust the volume of a music player or answer to an incoming call.

Martin Weigel, a PhD student belonging to the team of Jürgen Steimle at the Cluster of Excellence at Saarland University, explained that “the stickers allow us to enlarge the input space accessible to the user as they can be attached practically anywhere on the body”. The new achievement succeeds in diminishing even fatherly the distance between human and technology. Customisation opens the door to a world of creativity, where users can design their own iSkin patches through graphic software, giving a shape to their desires. The silicone used to create the patches makes them stretchable and flexible. The reason is explained by Dr Steimle, who commented saying that it “makes them easier to use in an everyday environment. A music player can simply be rolled up and put in a pocket. Dr Steimle added that the patches “are also skin-friendly, as they are attached to the skin with a biocompatible, medical-grade adhesive. Users can therefore decide where they want to position the sensor patch and how long they want to wear it.” The idea of the sensor patches is not limited to the single buttons. A keyboard sticker could represent a substitute to the usual plastic one, allowing typing and sending messages. The sensor patches are currently connected via cable to computer systems. However, as Dr Steimle explained, the microchips inserted inside may in future allow the skin sensor stickers to transmit wirelessly signals to other devices. The iSkin project’s paper won the ‘Best Paper Award’ at one of the most important conferences within the research area concerning human computer interaction, the SIGCHI conference. The research team will present the project in April at the SIGCHI conference in Seoul, Korea, and in the computer expo Cebit of Hannover between the 16th and the 20th of March.

Written by: Pietro Paolo Frigenti