Thermal Dissipation Resulting from Everyday Interactions as a Sensing Modality -- The MIDAS Touch

TL;DR

MIDAS is a novel thermal sensing method that characterizes objects by analyzing heat transfer during everyday interactions, achieving high accuracy in material recognition and capable of detecting thin objects and multiple interactions.

Contribution

Introduces MIDAS, a new thermal dissipation-based sensing modality for material recognition and object characterization during everyday interactions.

Findings

Achieves up to 83% accuracy in material recognition.

Can detect thermal dissipation through objects up to 2 mm thick.

Supports analysis of multiple objects during interaction.

Abstract

We contribute MIDAS as a novel sensing solution for characterizing everyday objects using thermal dissipation. MIDAS takes advantage of the fact that anytime a person touches an object it results in heat transfer. By capturing and modeling the dissipation of the transferred heat, e.g., through the decrease in the captured thermal radiation, MIDAS can characterize the object and determine its material. We validate MIDAS through extensive empirical benchmarks and demonstrate that MIDAS offers an innovative sensing modality that can recognize a wide range of materials with up to 83% accuracy and generalize to variations in the people interacting with objects. We also demonstrate that MIDAS can detect thermal dissipation through objects, up to 2 mm thickness, and support analysis of multiple objects that are interacted with