WEST LAFAYETTE — In the not-too-distant future, the exchange of business cards might be replaced by a simple handshake.
Music could be streamed from a smartwatch to wireless earphones by using signals in the body.
Or a doctor could reprogram a pacemaker without making a single incision.
Researchers at Purdue have invented a Human Body Communication system that uses a human’s inner electric signals to transmit data to network with other electronic devices. The device can be implanted or worn outside the body.
“The new frontier is health data,” said Shreyas Sen, an assistant professor in the Purdue School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Today, of course, it is common to transmit data through a computer hub.
“The human body is going to be the next hub,” Sen said.
He led a research team that expects to use the body in endless ways as a communications medium.
“The body is a very good conductor, thanks to its high water content. So, you can use the body as a wire,” Sen said.
Though the device at first sounds like the Hollywood-fabricated transmitter that extended life expectancy through a handshake in the 2011 movie “In Time,” Sen said he was unfamiliar with the Justin Timberlake film.
As far as that form of technological transmission — minus the life expectancy element: “We can do it right now,” Sen said.
The human body naturally picks up interference from outside sources around it such as FM radio signals. However, the Human Body Communication system suppresses such interfering signals and allows for communication between devices.
“Our body is highly conductive,” Sen said. The device “sends the signal inside your body, it travels throughout your body and it comes out of your body to the other device.
“With that in mind, when you handshake with somebody else you are forming a contact because my hand is conductive and your hand is conductive.”
The technology has pending patent applications through the Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization.
Safety-wise, Sen said the static created by brushing hair creates more electricity than the device.
Using the body, Sen said, prevents sending a signal through airwaves that could be hacked.
“By using the body, you are making it harder because the criminal has to come and touch me,” Sen said.
In August, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recalled nearly 500,000 pacemakers over concerns that hackers could gain access to the pacemakers through security loopholes — possibly allowing them to change settings or turn the devices off.
Generally, device wearers need to keep their hands to themselves.
“If somebody touches you, then it becomes similar to other technologies if they have the same signal. If they don’t touch you, we have tested, they don’t have the signal and they cannot hack.”