Stress Detection by Human Skin-Gas Sensing
About the Challenge
Today we can easily observe the effects of declined productivity and happiness levels due to excessive stress at work, in school and at home.
Although there have been many solutions invented, there has not been an impactful and effective solution developed that is able to transform our lives. Panasonic wants to develop a solution that is able to target the root cause of stress.
Problem Areas and Potential Partners
Possible applications of solution, feel free to propose new ideas
Example 1: Work, School, Home
Problem Area
- At work, people generally only learn to take care of the body when it’s is severely damaged from mental stress. People give up on their dreams due to inability to cope with stress, and management of companies face issues in effectively running a business due to issues related to employee wellness.
- In schools, the curriculum of education is changing to be more robust to develop new skills such as creativity in the future AI society. Accompanying that is an increase in academic workload, examinations and competitiveness amongst students. Yet, due to educators’ lack of understanding about stress, the added stress for children has been affecting the efficiency of education.
- At home, new generation family members are becoming increasingly estranged from each other, resulting in a lack of understanding about other’s stress status and mutual support between family members. Without this mutual support, individuals can easily fall into isolation.
- Together with the next advancements in technology e.g 5G, IoT, the world is focused on building smart cities using a human-centric design approach and is directing more attention toward the sustainability of our lifestyles. Ensuring sustainability to co-survive with our environment and the earth is becoming necessary and there is no better time than now to reconsider the position of stress in our lives.
Potential Partners- In these changing times, Panasonic believes it should provide and share its extensive advanced knowledge and capabilities about stress markers and the primitive development of stress marker sensing to help more people lead a fulfilling life. By sharing this knowledge, Panasonic believes it is possible to utilize objective standards to identify and understand different states of stress therefore developing new and implementable solutions.
- Through open collaboration, Panasonic hopes to support the development of self-awareness and self-actualization in both adults and children, caring for stressed individuals and contribute to the creation of happy homes and cities to achieve a high quality of life.
- Panasonic is looking for technology partners and business partners to co-create solutions, leveraging on Panasonic's knowledge of stress identification and management. In addition, Panasonic is also looking for technical partners that can co-develop to overcome technical issues and further advance the technology.
Target Market: Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and etcTechnology
A. Identification of Stress Marker Materials
Panasonic R&D team conducted tests with a large number of participants to collect skin gas under stress/relax situations. Composition analysis by Gas Chromatography and statistical analysis have been conducted. As result, significant difference was observed in amount of several materials depending on whether it is collected under stress or relax situations. Though this research, Panasonic R&D team achieved identification of more than 8 materials as stress markers.
B. Focused Detection Method of the Stress Marker Materials
Next, Panasonic R&D team focused on the following 2 detection methods to achieve the high-precision sensing of the stress marker materials
B.1. Focused Detection Method
(1) The first approach is utilizing Odorant-Bing Proteins(OBPs), which insects, silkworm has in their antenna to sense smell.
- The OBPs react with odorous substances, and at the reaction, OBPs emit phosphor.
- By modification of the protein structure so as to react with specific odorous substances, we can create sensors with high precision and high selectivity.
- As a result of R&D, Panasonic (i) succeeded in artificial production of OBPs from Silkworm‘s anttena and (ii) confirmed OBPs‘ reaction with odorous substances and emission of phosphor. Further Panasonic (iii) developed a plasmonics sensing board to detect phosphor effectively by creating resonance the with Au/Al nano particles.
(2) The second approach is High-Field Asymmetric waveform Ion Mobility Spectrometry (FAIMS), in which ions are separated by the application of a high-voltage asymmetric waveform at radio frequency (RF) combined with a static (DC) waveform applied between two electrodes. Depending on the ratio of mobility of the ion, it will migrate toward one or the other electrode. Only ions with specific mobility will pass through the device.
- Conventional FAIMS devices need very large power supply to apply high pulse voltage between electrodes.
- To reduces the needed voltage, Panasonic developed new structure of the electrode and gas channel.
- It enables downsizing of the entire system.
- Developed and prototype of an electrode chip and made demonstration.
B.2. Technology Readiness Level and Needs of Further Development
As result of Panasonic’s R&D, the technology readiness level for each method are as follows, for the actual implementation of the technology, further development is needed as follows:
(1) OBP
- Genetic modification of OBP and Selection/Production of Functional OBP
- Development of Sensor Device with Plasmon Substrate and Detection System
(2) FAIMS
- Improved Design of Electrode and Gas channel
- Finding Parameters and Conditioning for Selective Detection of Identified Material
- Development of Sensor Device
Mentors
Yoshinori Nakagawa
IP specialist
Yoshinori Nakagawa has 16-year experience of patent licensing and IP transactions in various technical fields, such as semiconductor, ICT and Bio-tech. Since beginning of his career, he has been focusing on Asian markets as a new field of IP activity and challenging himself. He can also speak fluent Mandarin.
Satoko Suzuki
IP Specialist
Satoko Suzuki has 7-year experience of IP licensing and promotion or development of business from the IP point of view, and 10-year corporate legal experience in various fields, including corporate strategy, business structure, alliance or M&A. She holds a master’s degree in Laws and Politics.
Jumpei Harada
Deputy Manager
Jumpei HARADA has 7-year experience of intellectual property field in Panasonic. He started working in Panasonic R&D Center Singapore from April 2019. He is in charge of open innovation activity through utilizing IP in South East Asia region. He holds Master of Engineering and registered as a patent attorney of Japan.
Prizes
Based on the content of your business idea and technical development plan, we will introduce the Panasonic technology to you, by way of technology transfer or, transfer or licensing of Panasonic’s patent rights related to this theme.
In addition, in case that the business idea and technical development plan are promising and when deemed necessary, we will consider the following possibilities:
- Set up a discussion opportunity with Panasonic engineers who were developing this technology
- Support for considering outsourcing of technology development
- Further development of the technology through outsourcing upon Panasonic’s additional investment and transfer of the developed technology
- IP consultation of your business idea
Terms and Conditions
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