Wearable sensors and systems have become increasingly popular for diverse applications. An emerging technology for physical activity assessment is Smart Textile Systems (STSs), comprised of sensitive/actuating fiber, yarn, or fabric that can sense an external stimulus. All required components of an STS (sensors, electronics, energy supply, etc.) can be conveniently embedded into a garment, providing a fully textile-based system. Thus, STSs have clear potential utility for measuring health-relevant aspects of human activity, and to do so passively and continuously in diverse environments. For these reasons, STSs have received increasing interest in recent studies. Despite this, however, limited evidence exists to support the implementation of STSs during diverse applications. Our long-term goal was to assess the feasibility and accuracy of using an STS to monitor human activities. Our immediate objective was to investigate the accuracy of an STS in three representative applications with respect to occupational scenarios, healthcare, and activities of daily living. A particular STS was examined, consisting of a smart socks (SSs), using textile pressure sensors, and smart undershirt (SUS), using textile strain sensors. We also explored the relative merits of these two approaches, separately and in combination. Thus, five studies were completed to design and evaluate the usability of the smart undershirt, and investigate the accuracy of implementing an STS in the noted applications. Input from the SUS led to planar angle estimations with errors on the order of 1.3 and 9.4 degrees for the low-back and shoulder, respectively. Overall, individuals preferred wearing a smart textile system over an IMU system and indicated the former as superior in several aspects of usability. In particular, the short-sleeved T-shirt was the most preferred garments for an STS. Results also indicated that the smart shirt and smart socks, both individually and in combination, could detect occupational tasks, abnormal and normal gaits, and activities of daily living with greater than 97% accuracy. Based on our findings, we hope to facilitate future work that more effectively quantifies sedentary periods that may be deleterious to human health, as well as detect activity types that may be help or hinder health and fitness. Such information may be of use to individuals and workers, healthcare providers, and ergonomists. More specifically, further analyses from this investigation could provide strategies for: (a) modifying a sedentary lifestyle or work scenario to a more active one, and (b) helping to more accurately identify occupational injury risk factors associated with human movement. / PHD / The use of interactive or “smart” textiles that have sensing material(s) incorporated into them supports an emerging technology for physical activity assessment called Smart Textile Systems (STSs). STSs are an increasingly useful technology for researchers, athletes, patients, and others. Our aims in the current study were the development and assessment of a new smart undershirt (SUS) that was designed to monitor low-back and shoulder motions, and to evaluate the preferred placement and usability of two STSs. We also assessed the accuracy of two smart garments, smart socks (SSs) and the SUS, both individually and in combination. Accuracy was evaluated in terms of the ability of these systems to distinguish between diverse simulated occupational tasks, normal and abnormal walking patterns, and several typical daily activities. Our investigation indicated that STSs could discriminate between different human activities common in three domains: occupational scenarios, healthcare, and activities of daily life. We also found that both smart garments (i.e., SSs and SUS) provided similar accuracy for activity classification, typically exceeding 97%, and thus there was no clear superiority between these two smart garments. We conclude that, overall, smart garments represent a promising area of research and a potential alternative for discriminating and monitoring a range of human activities. Use of this technology in the future may have positive implications for health promotion.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / William B. Kuhn / Balasubramaniam Natarajan / Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are an important part of the developing internet of things (IOT). NASA currently uses space suits with wired sensors to collect limited biomedical data. Continuous monitoring and collecting more extensive body vital signs is important to assess astronaut health. This dissertation investigates wireless biomedical sensor systems that can be easily incorporated into future space suits to enable real time astronaut health monitoring. The focus of the work is on the radio-wave channel and associated antennas. We show that the space suit forms a unique propagation environment where the outer layers of the suit’s thermal micrometeoroid garment are largely radio opaque. This environment can be modeled as a coaxial one in which the body itself plays the role of the coax center conductor while the space suit shielding materials play the role of the outer shield. This model is then validated through simulations and experiments. Selecting the best frequency of operation is a complex mixture of requirements, including frequency allocations, attenuation in propagation, and antenna size. We investigate the propagation characteristics for various frequency bands from 315 MHz to 5.2 GHz. Signal attenuation is analyzed as a function of frequency for various communication pathways through 3D simulations and laboratory experiments. Small-scale radio channel results indicate that using lower frequency results in minimal path loss. On the other hand, measurements conducted on a full-scale model suggest that 433 MHz and 2400 MHz yield acceptable path loss values. Propagation between the left wrist and left ankle yielded the worst overall path loss, but signals were still above –100 dBm in raw measurements for a 0dBm transmission indicating that the intra-suit environment is conducive to wireless propagation. Our findings suggest that the UHF bands are best candidate bands since there is interplay between the body conductivity favoring lower frequencies, and the difficulty of coupling RF energy into and out of the channel using suitably sized antennas favoring higher frequencies. Finally, a new self-shielded folded bow-tie antenna is proposed that can be a promising choice for the general area of WBAN technologies as well as potential new space suit environments.

Fear is an intrinsic human emotion, which produces with variable intensity a bodily reaction as a response to a stimuli. It is considered one of the basic human emotions, and it is universal of all animal species. Despite its subjective quality, fear has gained a rather negativistic stereotype that this research intends to debate and readdress, proposing that “negative fear” is part of an evolutionary transition cultivated by social and cultural constructs. This thesis will analyze the context in which fear operates, employing experience design methodologies and design research to reevaluate the role of fear in the contemporary settings of our societies to prove its connection to imagination, transhumanism and the production of empathy. After a brief historical perspective to situate this thesis in the contemporary framework of experience design, this research will investigate fear as prolific tool for the production of imagination, derived from its aesthetic connection to wonder and pleasure. This particular connection between fear to wonder was investigated among others by Charles Darwin, who also promoted the functionality of fear as the key to animal survival. The complex mechanism in which fear engages us will lead to the production of design prototypes that look at the animal kingdom and several other species’ talents in the detection and implementation of fear as a tool to survive. Here, the potential of our species to further evolve through the use of design will open a discussion on transhumanism and the future of humanity. The last section speculates a counterfactual conditional statement of how our humanity would operate, if emotional identities were reevaluated. In particular, the emotion of fear will be reevaluated for its unpleasant characteristics, from the bodily sensations to the mental postliminary conditions, to understand why certain human behaviors are still exercised, when the physiological effects are universally acknowledged as distasteful. By interpreting the physiological impact of fear, this research will continue its argument towards empathy, questioning what it truly means to ‘stand in someone’s else shoes’, specifically when fear is practiced. Empathy, as a pilaster in the mission statement of many contemporary disciplines, has surfaced in this research as viral phenomenon, which little has to do with truly ‘empathizing’. Here, it investigates how empathy can be experienced when fear is in play: if sharing fear as the bodily experience of someone else can lead to the production of authentic empathy, then humans have a chance to reevaluate its application in the contemporary global topics of war and diplomacy, domestic and public violence, or bullying to name a few. This research ultimately establishes a new perspective on the role of emotions in our societies, and creates a connection between design and the experience of intangibles, producing a view of the intrinsic systems of our being as ones deemed of value in the ambitious evolution of our species. / <p>The full thesis contains copyrighted material which has been removed in the published version.</p>

Die industrielle Instandhaltung ist ein erheblicher Kostenfaktor während der Betriebsphase einer verfahrenstechnischen Produktionsanlage. Insbesondere der Mangel an technischen Möglichkeiten zum Informationsaustausch des Instandhaltungspersonals mit der digitalen Anlage während der Arbeiten im Feld erzeugt hohe Kosten. Durch die entstehenden Medienbrüche sinkt die Qualität der Informationen in der Digitalen Anlage erheblich. Mobile Informationssysteme können diese Medienbrüche beseitigen und die Informationsqualität in der Digitalen Anlage entscheidend verbessern. Das Konzept der Distributed Wearable User Interfaces (DWUI) stellt einen integrierten Ansatz zur flexiblen Zusammenstellung gebrauchstauglicher Benutzungsschnittstellen für komplexe Arbeitsabläufe in widrigen Arbeitssituationen bereit. Diese setzen sich aus Interaktionsgeräten zusammen, die in einem kabellosen körpernahen Funknetzwerk miteinander verbunden sind und in ihrer Kombination die Benutzungsschnittstelle zu einem mobilen System bilden. Die Geräte sind ergonomisch und funktional optimal am Körper des Nutzers verteilt, wobei jedes Gerät eigenständig nutzbar und für eine bestimmte Aufgabe oder einen bestimmten Nutzungskontext optimiert ist. Die Ein- und Ausgaberäume der Geräte werden in einem integrierten Interaktionsraum harmonisiert. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird zunächst der Nutzungskontext der mobilen IT-gestützten Instandhaltung verfahrenstechnischer Produktionsanlagen im Hinblick auf Nutzungsszenarien und Anwendungsfälle für mobile Informationssysteme festgelegt. Darauf aufbauend werden Anforderungen an derartige Systeme spezifiziert und Gestaltungsgrundlagen und Empfehlungen speziell für DWUI-basierte mobile Informationssysteme erarbeitet. Anschließend wird eine Reihe spezieller Interaktionsgeräte vorgestellt, die verschiedene Interaktionsprinzipien, Techniken und Modalitäten umsetzen. Um diese Geräte in einem kollaborativen DWUI organisieren zu können, wird ein spezielles Kommunikationsprotokoll entworfen und prototypisch umgesetzt. Eine mobile Anwendung zur Instandhaltungsunterstützung wird vorgestellt, welche das DWUI-Kommunikationsprotokoll unterstützt und mit verschiedenen DWUI-Konfigurationen vollständig bedienbar ist. Diese Anwendung wird integriert in ein komplexes Unternehmensnetzwerk, über das sie Zugriff auf industrietypische computergestützte Planungswerkzeuge erhält. Anhand des resultierenden Gesamtsystems werden die prinzipielle Tauglichkeit und die Vorteile des DWUI-Konzepts demonstriert.

Wearable technology has attracted global attention in the last decade and the market is experiencing an unprecedented growth. Wearable devices are designed to be low-profile, light-weight and integrated seamlessly into daily life. Comfort is one of the most important requirements for wearable devices. Fabric based antennas are soft, flexible and can be integrated into clothing. State of the art textile manufacturing techniques such as embroidery, combined with advanced conductive textile materials can be used to fabricate flexible fabric based on-body antennas. In this thesis, the feasibility of using computerised embroidery in the fabrication of wearable, flexible yet functional fabric based antennas have been examined. The fabric based antennas are embroidered using conductive threads. The most suitable materials for fabricating embroidered antennas have been identified. The embroidered fabric based antenna systems including transmission lines and low-profile detachable connectors have been fabricated and their RF performances have been tested. The optimal manufacturing parameters related to embroidery such as stitch direction, spacing and length have been examined. The repeatability of embroidered antennas, cost estimation, and complexity of manufacturing process have been clearly presented. The results can be used to inform and provide guidelines for the development of representative products that can be mass manufactured. A new simulation approach has been introduced to analyse the anisotropic properties of embroidered conductive threads. Simulations and measurements indicate that the performances of embroidered antennas are affected by the anisotropic surface current due to the embroidered stitches. Exploiting the current direction, a novel non-uniform meshed patch antenna has been designed. Representative results show that the non-uniform meshed structure can significantly reduce more than 75% of the usage of conductive materials for the microstrip antennas with negligible effect on the antenna performance.

Various nano-fillers can introduce specific functions into polymer and expand their application areas. Myriad properties, such as mechanical, electrical, thermal, or magnetic properties can be combined with original polymer characteristics, including flexible, light weight, and ease of use. These composites can be used to produce multi-functional fibers as the next generation textile or fabrics. In this research, Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) is adopted as the main polymer with different nano-fillers, such as carbon nanotube (CNT), iron oxide nanoparticle, and graphene oxide nanoribbon (GONR). Using gel-spinning technology, PAN-based composite fibers are fabricated in single- or bi-component fibers. Fibers are also characterized for their structure, morphology, mechanical properties, as well as for their electrical, thermal, or magnetic properties. For example, bi-component fibers with polymer sheath and polymer-CNT core as well as polymer-CNT sheath and polymer core are processed. With electrical and thermal conductivity introduced by CNT, such bi-components fibers can be applied for wearable electronics or for thermal management. Joule-heating effect owing to applied electrical current on single component PAN/CNT fibers is also investigated. With controllable electrical conductivity and fiber temperature, this active functional fiber can be applied for temperature regulation fibers or new carbon fiber manufacturing process. Another example is magnetic fiber with superparamagnetic iron oxide nano-particles. These novel magnetic fibers with high strength can be used for actuator, inductors, EMI shielding, or microwave absorption. GONR is also discussed and used to reinforce PAN-based fibers. Several theoretical models are considered to analyze the observed results.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis addresses the need of Naval Aviation Maintenance to streamline and more effectively manage the process of technical consultation aboard deployed aircraft carriers. The current process involves the physical transportation of an appropriate technician to the carrier to perform required maintenance and/or repairs. In light of the technology currently available this process becomes obviously obsolete, overly costly and needlessly time consuming. By implementing wireless technology in combination with advanced software allowing the virtual collaboration of parties widely separated by geographical distance the Navy can establish a "virtual technical presence" onboard aircraft carriers wherever they may be in the world. This thesis will describe how the fusion of wearable computing, augmented reality, intelligent agents coupled with CoABS, and a modern collaborative software application can revolutionize Naval aviation maintenance as we know it. The technology is there - it only remains for the Navy to leverage it and take advantage of the significant returns that it will provide. The implementation of this technology will allow maintainers onboard deployed aircraft carriers to consult in an augmented virtual environment with technical assets on the shore. These shore-based assets will then be able to "walk" deployed personnel through complicated repair procedures in a matter of minutes or hours as opposed to the previous need to wait for days for the technician to arrive. This is a bold and innovative new concept that will allow commands at sea to increase their levels of combat readiness and allow them the ability to respond to ever changing mission needs. Turn around times for the repair of critical parts and assemblies will be reduced and readiness levels elevated. The ultimate goal of any command is mission accomplishment. This system will aid commands in achieving that all important goal. / Lieutenant, United States Navy

A growing number of factors, including costs, technological advancements, ageing populations, and medical errors, are leading industrialized countries to invest in research on alternative solutions to improve their health-care systems and increase patients’ quality of life. Personal health systems (PHS) examplify the use of information and communication technologies that enable a paradigm shift from the traditional hospital-centered healthcare delivery model toward a preventive and person-centered approach. PHS offer the means to monitor a patient’s health using wearable, portable or implantable systems that offer ubiquitous, unobtrusive biodata acquisition, allowing remote monitoring of treatment and access to the patient’s status. Electrical bioimpedance (EBI) technology is non-invasive, quick and relatively affordable technique that can be used for assessing and monitoring different health conditions, e.g., body composition assessments for nutrition. When combined with state-of-the-art advances in sensors and textiles, EBI technologies are fostering the implementation of wearable bioimpedance monitors that use functional garments for personalized healthcare applications. This research work is focused on the development of wearable EBI-based monitoring systems for ubiquitous health monitoring applications. The monitoring systems are built upon portable monitoring instrumentation and custom-made textile electrode garments. Portable EBI-based monitors have been developed using the latest material technology and advances in system-on-chip technology. For instance, a portable EBI spectrometer has been validated against a commercial spectrometer for total body composition assessment using functional textile electrode garments. The development of wearable EBI-based monitoring units using functional garments and dry textile electrodes for body composition assessment and respiratory monitoring has been shown to be a feasible approach. The availability of these measurement systems indicates progress toward the real implementation of personalized healthcare systems. / <p>QC 20170517</p>

With the advent of ever smaller and more powerful portable computing devices, and ever smaller cameras, wearable computing is becoming more feasible. The ever increasing numbers of augmented reality applications are allowing users to view additional data about their world overlaid on their world using portable computing devices. The main aim of this research is to enable a user of a wearable robot to explore large environments automatically viewing augmented reality at locations and on objects of interest. To implement this research a wearable visual robotic assistant is designed and constructed. Evaluation of the different technologies results in a final design that combines a shoulder mounted self stabilizing active camera, and a hand held magic lens into a single portable system. To enable the wearable assistant to locate known objects, a system is designed that combines an established method for appearance-based recognition with one for simultaneous localization and mapping using a single camera. As well as identifying planar objects, the objects are located relative to the camera in 3D by computing the image-to-database homography. The 3D positions of the objects are then used as additional measurements in the SLAM process, which routinely uses other point features to acquire and maintain a map of the surroundings, irrespective of whether objects are present or not. The monocular SLAM system is then replaced with a new method for building maps and tracking. Instead of tracking and mapping in a linear frame-rate driven manner, this adopted method separates the mapping from the tracking. This allows higher density maps to be constructed, and provides more robust tracking. The flexible framework provided by this method is extended to support multiple independent cameras, and multiple independent maps, allowing the user of the wearable two-camera robot to escape the confines of the desk top and explore arbitrarily sized environments. The final part of the work brings together the parallel tracking and multiple mapping system with the recognition and localization of planar objects from a database. The method is able to build multiple feature rich maps of the world and simultaneously recognize, reconstruct and localize objects within these maps. The object reconstruction process uses the spatially separated keyframes from the tracking and mapping processes to recognize and localize known objects in the world. These are then used for augmented reality overlays related to the objects.

This thesis in the field of microdata analysis aims to introduce dose optimizing algorithms for the pharmacological management of Parkinson’s disease (PD). PD is a neurodegenerative disease that mostly affects the motor functions of the patients and it is characterized as a movement disorder. The core symptoms of PD are: bradykinesia, postural instability, rigidity, and tremor. There is no cure for PD and the use of levodopa to manage the core symptoms is considered the gold standard. However, long term use of levodopa causes reduced medication efficacy, and side effects, such as dyskinesia, which can also be attributed to overmedication. When that happens precise individualized dosing schedules are required. The goal of this thesis is to examine if algorithmic methods can be used to find dosing schedules that treat PD symptoms and minimize manifestation of side effects. Data from three different sources were used for that purpose: data from a clinical study in Uppsala University hospital in 2015, patient admission chart data from Uppsala University hospital during 2011-2015, and data from a clinical study in Gothenburg University during 2016-2017. The data were used to develop the methods and evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms.The first algorithm that was developed was a sensor-based method that derives objective measurements (ratings) of PD motor states. The construction of the sensor index was based on subjective ratings of patients’ motor functions made by three movement disorder experts. This sensor-based method was used when deriving algorithmic dosing schedules. Afterwards, a method that uses medication information and ratings of the patients’ motor states to fit individual patient models was developed. This method uses mathematical optimization to individualize specific parameters of dose-effects models for levodopa intake, through minimizing the distance between motor state ratings and dose-effect curves. Finally, two different dose optimization algorithms were developed and evaluated, that had as input the individual patient models. The first algorithm was specific to continuous infusion of levodopa treatment, where the patient’s state was set to a specific target value and the algorithm made dosing adjustments to keep that patients motor functions on that state. The second algorithm concerned oral administration of microtables of levodopa. The ambition with this algorithm was that the suggested doses would find the right balance between treating the core symptoms of PD and, at the same time, minimizing the side effects of long term levodopa use, mainly dyskinesia. Motor state ratings for this study were obtained through the sensor index. Both algorithms followed a principle of deriving a morning dose and a maintenance dose for the patients, with maintenance dose being an infusion rate for the first algorithm, and oral administration doses at specific time points for the second algorithm.The results showed that the sensor-based index had good test-retest reliability, sensitivity to levodopa treatment, and ability to make predictions in unseen parts of the dataset. The dosing algorithm for continuous infusion of levodopa had a good ability to suggest an optimal infusion rating for the patients, but consistently suggested lower morning dose than what the treating personnel prescribed. The dosing algorithm for oral administration of levodopa showed great agreement with the treating personnel’s prescriptions, both in terms of morning and maintenance dose. Moreover, when evaluating the oral medication algorithm, it was clear that the sensor index ratings could be used for building patient specific models.