Contact is a Portolano research project for mediating communication between ubiquitous computing devices though human touch.  Imperceptible electrical fields use the conductive properties of the human body to communicate digital information.  Typically, a personal, carried device will communicate with a device in the environment. Such communication could communicate preferences, deliver URLs or GUIDs, or supply data for contextual awareness.  

Our fastest data rate is 56Kbps.  Faster data rates appear possible; we are currently limited more by the hardware design than the medium.

Papers:

Partridge, K., Dahlquist, B., Veiseh, A., Cain, A., Goldberg, J., Foreman, A., and Borriello, G., . Empirical Measurements of Intrabody Communication Performance under Varied Physical Configurations. UIST 2001.

Partridge, K., Arnstein, L., Borriello, G.,  and Whitted, T..  Fast Intrabody Signaling. Demonstration at Wireless and Mobile Computer Systems and Applications (WMCSA), Monterey, CA, December 2000. (PDF)

Rosencrantz, M., Partridge, K.  Walk-up Keyboard: An Efficient Low Overhead Interface for Transient Workers.  CHI Student Poster, CHI 2001. (PDF)

Copyright (C) 2001 University of Washington
For problems or questions regarding this web contact [kepart@cs.washington.edu].
Last updated: September 03, 2001.