Recoginition & Smartphones

Technology has advanced far beyond our expectations. However, it always ceases to continue to amaze us. Your phone could be storing an ‘imprint’ of your unique grip each time you pick it up – meaning it could recognize you by giving it a quick shake.

There’s a new technology that might make your next phone really personal to you. Your smartphone might be able to work out whether or not it’s being held by its ‘owner’.

Developers from Queen Mary University in London have discovered that when someone holds their smartphone, the device creates an imprint of their palm and fingers on the back.

The technology could also be used to make your phone more personalized so that it can recognize you by the way you hold the device. As well to the usual palm size and shape, there is also a grip pattern on your fingers which can tell how firm or soft you are. Holding your phone in your hand could even become a new way to log into your device.

Dr. James Newman said: ‘There may very well be a need for a confirmation of identity in future technology where the device has to be identified.

‘Right now, we are not even considering what purpose this could have. But as smartphones are getting more and more personalized, it might become an interesting application.’

The technology is already being used by some smartwatches which can display notifications based on how you hold them. While the research team had to build their own devices to carry out their experiments, they claim that the concept is already in use on smartphones that have been designed by manufacturers such as Dell and Huawei.

The researchers say that the ‘imprint’ can be traced by using a computer vision system that knows how to distinguish between a man’s or woman’s palm. They took 30 human subjects and photographed their hands, revealing the data needed to build their recognition system.

This included the finger width and its length as well as the angle of your hand while holding it. The researchers were also able to track how many times each hand was used.

Once they had collected enough information, they then tested their new smartphone detection technology by showing them photographs of other people’s hands with varying degrees of palm prints imprinted on the back.

They discovered that the recognition system could detect the gender of a user by measuring their palm imprints with an accuracy of more than 90 percent. They were also able to tell whether or not a phone was being held in a man’s or woman’s hand with an accuracy of around 70 percent.

Dr. Newman added: ‘We can identify the gender based on the size of the palm and we can also recognize whether it is being held in a dominant or non-dominant hand.’

‘There are some new authentication methods which are based on biometrics, such as your voice pattern or your way of walking,’ he said. ‘We could recognize your phone based on the way you hold it.’

The researchers are testing more accurate technology which will measure fine details such as tiny ridges in each fingertip, as well as analyze palm indentations.

Futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson said: ‘This technology is going to be huge. We carry our phones with us all the time and they track where we go, who we talk to, and how we spend our time. This is all data that could be used to target advertising or even tailor the way your phone works just for you. ‘But it’s not just phones that will become personalized, driverless cars could also have a recognition system which allows them to tell whether it’s you behind the wheel or not.’

This new technology does raise some interesting questions about security and privacy. ‘The fact a device can recognize you could also mean it knows whether you have a lot of money or if you are attractive,’ he said. ‘This is already a problem with some camera phones which can be hacked to identify where you are, and how wealthy your neighborhood is.’ says Dr. Newman.

He said the technology may also be used to track people in places where there is no security infrastructure such as at schools and hospitals. ‘This technology is going to make all the gadgets we use much more personalized and that could be very useful but it could also lead to new problems.

As AI systems have become more advanced, an artificially intelligent algorithm has been created to learn to recognize mobile phone users from the way they hold their smart devices and the skates in their hands. Small vibrations in our hands could help the algorithm identify people according to research carried