Grip Kinetic Profile Variability in Adult Signature Writing
Bassma Ghali · Journal of Biometrics & Biostatistics · 2013
Previous studies of handwriting grip kinetics have demonstrated the ability to classify writers based on the topography of grip forces associated with signature writing.However, the topographic representation requires a large array of individual sensors in practice.The possibility of differentiating participants on the basis of a summative, temporal force profile is yet unknown.In this study, we investigated the variability of features derived from a time-evolving total grip force profile.Using an instrumented writing utensil, twenty adult participants provided 600 samples of a well-practised bogus signature over a period of 10 days.Deploying a combination of temporal, spectral and information-theoretic features, a linear discriminant analysis classifier outperformed nonparametric and nonlinear classifier alternatives and discriminated among participants with an average misclassification rate of 5.8% as estimated by cross-validation.These results suggest the existence of a unique kinetic profile for each writer even when generating the same written product.Our findings highlight the potential of using grip kinetics as a biometric measure.