Running Shoe Pedometer

Running shoe pedometer aims to solve the issue of worn out running shoes. It can be difficult to know just how many miles you have run in your shoes and when a new pair is needed. Running in old shoes and worn out shoes is heavily linked to injury. My proposed project is a device that is powered by the compressive forces on the shoes soles that counts the number of steps the wearer takes using a microcontroller. Then, when the shoe reaches milestone that indicate it has been used 75% 90% and 100% of its expected life, it will output the information to the user. In order to output the wear life of the shoes to the user, a series of color changing chemical reactions will be used. These reactions will most likely be acid/base with some type of indicator or an electrochromic material. These color changes will allow the user to see that their shoes are worn out. The device should be extremely low cost so that it can be built into a running shoe and disposed of when the shoe is worn out

Review of Safety Evaluation of Thermal Wearable Power Harvesting Device

Thermal wearable power harvesting device is developing fast nowadays. The increasing demand on simple and easily handled devices forcing researches to find a better on improving the performance and safety of the devices. Thermal power harvesting is using the heat from the surrounding and human body to generate power. So, the safety precaution needs to be taken in order to keep it safe to use. This paper reviews the use of wearable technology, the basic concept, methods and future of power harvesting technology, ideas of thermoelectric power generators and its related work as well the safety evaluation for international standard of wearable devices

Novel Methods for Weak Physiological Parameters Monitoring.

M.S. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017

Sensing Systems for Respiration Monitoring: A Technical Systematic Review

Respiratory monitoring is essential in sleep studies, sport training, patient monitoring, or health at work, among other applications. This paper presents a comprehensive systematic review of respiration sensing systems. After several systematic searches in scientific repositories, the 198 most relevant papers in this field were analyzed in detail. Different items were examined: sensing technique and sensor, respiration parameter, sensor location and size, general system setup, communication protocol, processing station, energy autonomy and power consumption, sensor validation, processing algorithm, performance evaluation, and analysis software. As a result, several trends and the remaining research challenges of respiration sensors were identified. Long-term evaluations and usability tests should be performed. Researchers designed custom experiments to validate the sensing systems, making it difficult to compare results. Therefore, another challenge is to have a common validation framework to fairly compare sensor performance. The implementation of energy-saving strategies, the incorporation of energy harvesting techniques, the calculation of volume parameters of breathing, or the effective integration of respiration sensors into clothing are other remaining research efforts. Addressing these and other challenges outlined in the paper is a required step to obtain a feasible, robust, affordable, and unobtrusive respiration sensing system

Physiological Parameter Sensing with Wearable Devices and Non-Contact Dopper Radar.

M.S. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017

Power Processing for Electrostatic Microgenerators

Microgenerators are electro-mechanical devices which harvest energy from local environmental from such sources as light, heat and vibrations. These devices are used to extend the life-time of wireless sensor network nodes. Vibration-based microgenerators for biomedical applications are investigated in this thesis. In order to optimise the microgenerator system design, a combined electro-mechanical system simulation model of the complete system is required. In this work, a simulation toolkit (known as ICES) has been developed utilising SPICE. The objective is to accurately model end-to-end microgenerator systems. Case-study simulations of electromagnetic and electrostatic microgenerator systems are presented to verify the operation of the toolkit models. Custom semiconductor devices, previously designed for microgenerator use, have also been modelled so that system design and optimisation of complete microgenerator can be accomplished. An analytical framework has been developed to estimate the maximum system effectiveness of an electrostatic microgenerator operating in constant-charge and constant-voltage modes. The calculated system effectiveness values are plotted with respect to microgenerator sizes for different input excitations. Trends in effectiveness are identified and discussed in detail. It was found that when the electrostatic transducer is interfaced with power processing circuit, the parasitic elements of the circuit are reducing the energy generation ability of the transducer by sharing the charge during separation of the capacitor plates. Also, found that in constant-voltage mode the electrostatic microgenerator has a better effectiveness over a large operating range than constant-charge devices. The ICES toolkit was used to perform time-domain simulation of a range of operating points and the simulation results provide verification of the analytical results

Wearable sensors for respiration monitoring: a review

This paper provides an overview of flexible and wearable respiration sensors with emphasis on their significance in healthcare applications. The paper classifies these sensors based on their operating frequency distinguishing between high-frequency sensors, which operate above 10 MHz, and low-frequency sensors, which operate below this level. The operating principles of breathing sensors as well as the materials and fabrication techniques employed in their design are addressed. The existing research highlights the need for robust and flexible materials to enable the development of reliable and comfortable sensors. Finally, the paper presents potential research directions and proposes research challenges in the field of flexible and wearable respiration sensors. By identifying emerging trends and gaps in knowledge, this review can encourage further advancements and innovation in the rapidly evolving domain of flexible and wearable sensors.This work was supported by the Spanish Government (MICINN) under Projects TED2021-131209B-I00 and PID2021-124288OB-I00.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version