Available Technologies

Executive Summary

The level of interactions between people is a difficult factor to quantify.  The objective of this technology is a wearable sensor device, which can be used for data-driven characterization of human social interaction to provide a quantified measure of a person’s human interactions.  The wearable device can detect for how long and how many times the wearer faces other people. The technology is capable of multi-modal sensing including when the wearer faces a human body, how far form the subject, as well as physical movement of the wearer.  If needed additional sensors can be incorporated into the final package.

Description of Technology

Michigan State University has developed an ultrasonic distance measurement modality that measures the distance between the device and any object that is in front of it. It also reliably measures the temperature of the object. An onboard processor combines the distance data (i.e., both absolute and its temporal variation) and the temperature of the object to detect if the object in front is a person. This can be done in the presence of ambient noise and objects with different temperatures that can be found in the environment. Wearer body movement is also measured for detecting the relative movement of the wearer and the person in front, which in turn can be used for estimating the body language of the wearer during a detected interaction. The recorded data is sent to a mobile phone App which can store, track, and display the wearer’s interaction dynamics, and can also upload such information to an Internet cloud server.

Key Benefits

• Interaction quantification
• When one subject is wearing the device, identifies interactions with subjects without need for the other that subject to wear a device

Applications

• Healthcare: monitoring human interaction for elderly, Alzheimer, early assessment of autism, Depression, Schizophrenia, Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder
• Retail: tracking how sales personnel see/interact with customers
• Team dynamics
• Military and law enforcement: optimization of team training
• Business and Enterprise: office layout planning

Patent Status:

Patent pending

Licensing Rights Available

Full licensing rights available

Inventors: Subir Biswas

Tech ID: TEC2016-0098