Mobile Phone User Authentication with Grip Gestures using Pressure Sensors

Abstract

Authentication methods with password, PIN, face recognition, and fingerprint identification have widely been used, however these methods have problems of difficulty in one-handed operation, vulnerability to shoulder hacking, and illegal access using fingerprint with super glue or facial portrait. Prom viewpoint of usability and safety, strong and uncomplicated method is required. We propose a user authentication method based on grip gestures using pressure sensors mounted on the lateral and back of a mobile phone. Grip gesture is an operation of grasping a mobile phone, which is assumed to be done instead of conventional unlock procedure. Grip gesture can be performed with one hand. Moreover, it is hard to imitate grip gestures since finger movements and grip force during a grip gesture are hardly seen by the others. We experimentally investigated the feature values of grip force and evaluated our proposed method from viewpoint of error rate.