Communication system for a tooth-mounted RF sensor used for continuous monitoring of nutrient intake

In this Thesis, the communication system of a wearable device that monitors the user’s diet is studied. Based in a novel RF metamaterial-based mouth sensor, different decisions have to be made concerning the system’s technologies, such as the power source options for the device, the wireless technology used for communications and the method to obtain data from the sensor. These issues, along with other safety rules and regulations, are reviewed, as the first stage of development of the Food-Intake Monitoring projectOutgoin

Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare: A Systematic Review

Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today. Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but they now work closely with us to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue situations. Farm animals are a critical part of the global food supply chain, and there is increasing consumer interest in organically fed and humanely raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint. Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and shrinking and compromised habitat. This review sets the goal to systematically survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for domestic, farm and wild animal welfare. We use the notion of \emph{animal welfare} in broad terms, to review the technologies for assessing whether animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and also positively stimulated in their environment. Also the notion of \emph{smart computing and sensing} is used in broad terms, to refer to computing and sensing systems that are not isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote data collection, processing, exchange and analysis. We review smart technologies for domestic animals, indoor and outdoor animal farming, as well as animals in the wild and zoos. The findings of this review are expected to motivate future research and contribute to data, information and communication management as well as policy for animal welfare

Remote Monitoring Of Vital Signs

In this project, our goal is to design a wireless sensor system, which can monitor user’s vital signs and notifies medical personnel

REMOTE MONITORING OF VITAL SIGNS

In this project, our goal is to design a wireless sensor system, which can monitor user's vital signs and notifies medical personnel. . During health emergencies, there is little tolerance for system errors and poor usability designs. Clinical and technological efforts are being directed to focus on post surgery concerns to enhance the safety of the patients during this vulnerable period. This system will consist of a monitoring device, data transmission and the monitoring station. The proposed device will be asked to measure the blood pressure of the patients. Data will be transmitted using Hyperterminal and RS 232 into PC and the development the GUI will be based on LAB VIEW. This system shall facilitate communication between patients and medical professionals from distant locations

LungTrack: towards contactless and zero dead-zone respiration monitoring with commodity RFIDs

International audienceRespiration rate sensing plays a critical role in elderly care and patient monitoring. The latest research has explored the possibility of employing Wi-Fi signals for respiration sensing without attaching a device to the target. A critical issue with these solutions includes that good monitoring performance could only be achieved at certain locations within the sensing range, while the performance could be quite poor at other "dead zones." In addition, due to the contactless nature, it is challenging to monitor multiple targets simultaneously as the reflected signals are often mixed together. In this work, we present our system, named LungTrack, hosted on commodity RFID devices for respiration monitoring. Our system retrieves subtle signal fluctuations at the receiver caused by chest displacement during respiration without need for attaching any devices to the target. It addresses the dead-zone issue and enables simultaneous monitoring of two human targets by employing one RFID reader and carefully positioned multiple RFID tags, using an optimization technique. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that LungTrack can achieve a respiration monitoring accuracy of greater than 98% for a single target at all sensing locations (within 1 st − 5 th Fresnel zones) using just one RFID reader and five tags, when the target's orientation is known a priori. For the challenging scenario involve two human targets, LungTrack is able to achieve greater than 93% accuracy when the targets are separated by at least 10 cm

Music and Wearable Technology

Music affects the body in different ways. The goal of this project was to determine how music affects an exerciser and build an Android app to optimize exercise performance. Through use of a smart watch, heart rate and step rate were collected and matched to values assigned to local music files to play to the listener. This caused the song to change based on current exercise performance to either enhance it, stabilize it, or decrease it

Design and Development of Smart Brain-Machine-Brain Interface (SBMIBI) for Deep Brain Stimulation and Other Biomedical Applications

Machine collaboration with the biological body/brain by sending electrical information back and forth is one of the leading research areas in neuro-engineering during the twenty-first century. Hence, Brain-Machine-Brain Interface (BMBI) is a powerful tool for achieving such machine-brain/body collaboration. BMBI generally is a smart device (usually invasive) that can record, store, and analyze neural activities, and generate corresponding responses in the form of electrical pulses to stimulate specific brain regions. The Smart Brain-Machine-Brain-Interface (SBMBI) is a step forward with compared to the traditional BMBI by including smart functions, such as in-electrode local computing capabilities, and availability of cloud connectivity in the system to take the advantage of powerful cloud computation in decision making. In this dissertation work, we designed and developed an innovative form of Smart Brain-Machine-Brain Interface (SBMBI) and studied its feasibility in different biomedical applications. With respect to power management, the SBMBI is a semi-passive platform. The communication module is fully passive—powered by RF harvested energy; whereas, the signal processing core is battery-assisted. The efficiency of the implemented RF energy harvester was measured to be 0.005%. One of potential applications of SBMBI is to configure a Smart Deep-Brain-Stimulator (SDBS) based on the general SBMBI platform. The SDBS consists of brain-implantable smart electrodes and a wireless-connected external controller. The SDBS electrodes operate as completely autonomous electronic implants that are capable of sensing and recording neural activities in real time, performing local processing, and generating arbitrary waveforms for neuro-stimulation. A bidirectional, secure, fully-passive wireless communication backbone was designed and integrated into this smart electrode to maintain contact between the smart electrodes and the controller. The standard EPC-Global protocol has been modified and adopted as the communication protocol in this design. The proposed SDBS, by using a SBMBI platform, was demonstrated and tested through a hardware prototype. Additionally the SBMBI was employed to develop a low-power wireless ECG data acquisition device. This device captures cardiac pulses through a non-invasive magnetic resonance electrode, processes the signal and sends it to the backend computer through the SBMBI interface. Analysis was performed to verify the integrity of received ECG data

Real-time vital signs monitoring system for livestock

The focus on the application of information and communication technologies & electronics (ICTE) in agriculture has proved to be very efficient and revolutionary in several ways. With the adoption of increasingly efficient and modern technologies, agriculture, in general, improves its competitiveness and production is carried out in a more sustainable way. The intensive use of ICTE in this sector has been aimed at creating integrated solutions that generate efficiency gains in productivity, sustainability and economic, social and environmental quality. This type of technologies, when aimed at monitoring livestock, have some characteristics in common. Precise positioning and geolocation from GPS, geographic mapping, sensors and communication systems are some of the tools that will allow the development of a complete and extremely accurate system for monitoring vital signs. This proposal for a cattle or equine ICTE-based monitoring system is developed as a belt. It contains a microcontroller that is used to evaluate the animal's heart rate and detect abnormal mobility. The correct evaluation of these two parameters proves very useful for the detection of many of the pathologies and anomalies that constitute economic losses for the producers. With accurate monitoring, it is possible to circumvent these events that are detrimental to animal production.O foco na aplicação de tecnologias de informação e comunicação e eletrónica (TICE) na agricultura provou ser muito eficiente e revolucionário de várias maneiras. Com a adoção de tecnologias cada vez mais eficientes e modernas, a agricultura em geral melhora sua competitividade e a produção é realizada de forma mais sustentável. O uso intensivo de TICE neste setor tem por objetivo criar soluções integradas que gerem ganhos efetivos em produtividade, sustentabilidade e qualidade económica, social e ambiental. Este tipo de tecnologias, quando destinadas à monitoração de gado, têm algumas características em comum. Posicionamento preciso e geolocalização de GPS, mapeamento geográfico, sensores e sistemas de comunicação são algumas das ferramentas que permitirão o desenvolvimento de um sistema completo e preciso para monitorar sinais vitais de animais. Esta proposta para um sistema de monitorização de gado ou equinos, baseado em TICE, é desenvolvido como um cinto. Este contém um dispositivo microcontrolador que é usado para avaliar a frequência cardíaca do animal e detetar mobilidade anormal. A avaliação correta desses dois parâmetros mostra-se muito útil para a deteção de muitas das patologias e anomalias que constituem perdas económicas para os produtores. Com uma monitorização precisa, é possível contornar estes eventos prejudiciais a uma produção animal