This thesis presents a method for estimating the positions of human limbs during motion that can be applied to wearable, textile-based sensors. The method was validated for the elbow and shoulder joints with data from two garments with resistive, thread-based sensors sewn into the garments at multiple locations. The proposed method was able to estimate the elbow joint position with an average error of 2.2 degrees. The method also produced an average difference in Euclidean distance of 3.7 degrees for the estimated shoulder joint position using data from nine sensors placed around the subject's shoulder. The most accurate combination of sensors on the shoulder garment was found to produce an average difference in distance of 3.4 degrees and used only six sensors. The characteristics of the resistive, thread-based sensor used to validate the method are also detailed as some of their behaviors proved to affect the accuracy of the method negatively. / Master of Science / Human motion capture systems gather data on the position of the human body during motion. The data is then used to recreate and analyze the motion digitally. There is a need for motion capture devices capable of measuring long-term data on human motion, especially in physical therapy. However, the currently available motion capture systems have limitations that make long-term or daily use either impossible or uncomfortable. This thesis presents a method that uses data from wearable, textile-based sensors to estimate the positions of human limbs during motion. Two garments were used to validate the method on the elbow and shoulder joints. The proposed method was able to measure the elbow and shoulder joints with an average accuracy that is within the acceptable range for clinical settings.

The global wearable technology market is forecasted for strong growth over the next five years with revenue expected to reach $14 billion in 2016 and grow to $34.2 billion by 2020 (CCS Insight, 2016). The wearable industry has undergone a long metamorphosis and growth and is presently becoming more mainstream with the popularization of fitness trackers and smartwatches. Because media portrayals influence public perception of topics covered by the media, exploring media portrayals of wearables is an important component part of understanding trends in growth and popularity of wearables. No other study has analyzed how the media has talked about wearable technology. This study examines newspaper coverage of wearable technology from 1988-2016 using the news framing perspective. A systematic content analysis was conducted on 182 articles from the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, New York Daily News, New York Post and The Washington Post analyzing issue frames, interview sources, episodic vs thematic frames, and type of wearable. This study found that among the four issue frames (progress, regulation, conflict, and generic risk) progress was the dominant frame. Episodic news frames emphasizing individual or specific examples were heavily relied on over thematic frames. The frequency of mentioning sources was not related to episodic/thematic coverage except for professor as an interview source. This study also found a significant relationship between interview source and year for no source. The results of this research provides useful insight into how wearable technology has been framed over the past 28 years by the news media which is helpful for companies creating and marketing these technologies, journalists writing about this type of technology, and scholars interested in understanding how the media talks about a new technology while it is in the process of diffusion. / Master of Arts

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No. of bitstreams: 1 VICENTE MARTIN MASTROCOLA.pdf: 30106866 bytes, checksum: 100fce965601e8e1054c7927906aebae (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-30 / In view of the centrality of relationships between communication, consumption and technology in contemporaneity, the present research project examines certain digital devices which potentially hybridize to the human body and lie in the wearable technology category. More specifically, we discuss new types of human/non-human intertwining articulated by this category, understood from a sociocultural point of view. When dealing with wearable technologies, we discuss how the orchestration of various socio-technical objects is reconfiguring daily life and generating new possibilities to think the materiality of communications and the rhetorics of consumption. This study does not attain to a specific device. We seek to think, in a broader fashion, different examples of integration between humans and non-humans, considering, among other aspects, how this type of technology can serve strategically to enhance relationships between brand/companies and their consumers. Methodologically, this thesis activates various research procedures, such as empirical research of qualitative approach, interviews with key informants from companies related to the technological area of Brazil (Movimento Makers, PontoMobi, Nike, ESPM, GFK International etc), technology/media/communications researchers from foreign universities (Bratislava Pan-European University, Budapest Faculty of Engineering e Klagenfurt AlpenAdria-Universität), interviews with distinct users of wearable devices and bibliographic research, the latter supported by representative authors of the field of communication, consumption, media and technology, such as Alex Primo, André Lemos, Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour, Danah Boyd, Gilbert Simondon, Luisa Paraguai, Roberta Sassatelli, Suely Fragoso, Tommaso Venturini, among others. The methodology emphasizes the Cartography of Controversies, a model which derives from the Actor-Network Theory, initially proposed by Bruno Latour. In this doctoral thesis, we seek to identify different connections between communication, consumption and technological aspects. / Tendo em vista a centralidade das relações entre comunicação, consumo e tecnologia na contemporaneidade, esta pesquisa examina determinados dispositivos digitais que potencialmente se hibridizam ao corpo humano e que se situam na categoria das wearable technologies. Mais especificamente, discutimos novos tipos de entrelaçamento humano/nãohumano articulados por essa categoria tecnológica, entendida a partir de uma abordagem sóciocultural. Quando tratamos da tecnologia vestível, discutimos como a orquestração de diversos objetos sociotécnicos está reconfigurando o cotidiano e gerando novas possibilidades para pensarmos as materialidades da comunicação e as retóricas do consumo. Neste trabalho, não nos atemos a um device específico; procuramos refletir de maneira ampla sobre diferentes exemplos de integrações entre humano e não-humano, ponderando, mais especificamente, sobre como esse tipo de tecnologia pode servir estrategicamente para relações entre marcas/empresas e seus consumidores. Metodologicamente, este estudo aciona diversos procedimentos de pesquisa, tais como: pesquisa empírica de abordagem qualitativa, entrevistas com informantes privilegiados de empresas ligadas à área tecnológica do Brasil (Movimento Makers, PontoMobi, Nike, ESPM, GFK International etc), pesquisadores de tecnologia/mídia/comunicação de universidades estrangeiras (Bratislava Pan-European University, Budapest Faculty of Engineering e Klagenfurt Alpen-Adria-Universität), entrevistas com usuários de distintos wearable devices e pesquisa bibliográfica, sendo que esta última foi amparada por autores representativos do campo da comunicação, consumo, mídia e tecnologia, como Alex Primo, André Lemos, Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour, Danah Boyd, Gilbert Simondon, Luisa Paraguai, Roberta Sassatelli, Suely Fragoso, Tommaso Venturini, entre outros. A metodologia, enfatiza a Cartografia de Controvérsias, modelo que deriva da Teoria Ator-Rede, inicialmente proposta por Bruno Latour. No trajeto desta tese de doutoramento, buscamos identificar diferentes conexões entre comunicação, consumo e aspectos tecnológicos.

A Research Report Submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Witwatersrand University School of Economics and Business Sciences, In partial fulfilment of the requirements of a Master Degree in Marketing, May 2017 / The consumer market of Smart wearable technology has shown a massive growth, therefore convincing that Smart wearable technology will be the next great thing, with market analysts forecasting its market to be worth over $30 billion by 2020. However this belief is mainly driven by major new technology manufacturers to produce Smart wearable devices that commoditise cellphones, tablets, and portable computers to influence consumer purchase intention. Consumers purchase intention is crucial for every business survival, therefore cannot be overemphasised. With the increasing number of Smart wearable technology brands on the electronics market, South African consumers have to make a choice on which brands to purchase. This study examines the factors influencing the purchase intention of Smart wearable technology in South Africa, with a special focus on product quality, design, price, and consumer attitude. From the academic side, the study makes a significant contribution by exploring the impact of product price and consumer attitude on consumer purchase intention. As a result, manufacturers in the wearable technology industry may apply this study information to develop proper strategies that will help influence more people to purchase wearable devices and ensure Smart wearable technology market growth. The study data were collected through the aid of a self-administered hardcopy questionnaire, which was circulated by the researcher in the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg. The research findings show that both consumer attitude and product price have a significant positive effect on the intention to purchase Smart wearable devices. Nevertheless, to be more precise, the effect of consumer’s attitude on purchase intention goes through the positive effect of a product design on consumer’s attitude. Both product quality and price are found to extend the effect of positivity of consumer’s attitude toward the product or brand, and the price tag of the product. These scenarios are fully supported in hypotheses one, two, and three. Although both quality and design positively influence product price, Product design is found to have an enlarging effect on product price. Generally, it can be stated that the design of a product successfully influence the price set for product. / XL2018

Esta pesquisa busca delinear o contexto histórico e teórico sobre as tecnologias vestíveis de moda, enfatizando suas criações por meio da plataforma Arduino em mídia digital. Priorizam-se as possíveis relações com a reconfiguração dos espaços urbanos devidos à coexistência física dos lugares com o recente território informacional. Abrange-se, também, uma perspectiva sobre a relação corpo e tecnologia, na qual este último foi, e ainda é, essencial na gestão dos indivíduos nas grandes cidades. Por meio deste trabalho, acredita-se tanto na possibilidade de fomentar uma nova área de saber de moda quanto na reflexão de uma nova imagem de subjetividade que considere, simetricamente, a atuação de humanos e não-humanos, assim como as instâncias físicas e virtuais / This research aims to delineate the historical and theoretical context about fashionable wearable technology, emphasizing their creations through the Arduino platform in digital media. Possible relations with the reconfiguration of urban spaces due to physical coexistence of the places with the recent informational territory are given priority. It covers is also a perspective on the relationship body and technology, in which the latter was and still is essential in the management of individuals in large cities. Through this work, it is believed either the possibility of fostering a new area of knowledge of fashion, as the reflection of a new image of subjectivity to consider symmetrically the performance of humans and non-humans, as well as the physical and virtual instances

Children are born with an intrinsic motivation to play games. Over the past decade, educational video games have invaded mainstream classroom instruction and researchers are “considering how games might be used in pursuit of engaging, effective learning experiences� (Squire and Jenkins, 2003). This research encompasses designing math games using a constructivist and embodied cognition pedagogy in an effort to answer the question: “Will overlapping wearable technology and mathematical objectives with traditional children’s games show improved efficacy in students’ math skills and increase students’ motivation to learn math in 4th thru 6th grade students?� Methods of research include a usability study and four subsequent iterative studies to improve the game and the technology, measuring students’ math self-efficacy and motivation to learn math. The final goal of this thesis is to design, test and document an engaging children’s math learning game using wearable technology that requires active physical experiences while involved in deep thinking and complex problem solving (Gee, 2003) within real world environments, beyond classrooms, pencil and paper, and even beyond traditional computer games in front of a computer screen.

In this modern landscape where families are spending increasing time living separately, due to parental separation, work travel, and illness, current communication technologies do not fully support the needs of intimate family communication in families with young children, aged two to nine. Prolonged separation, without intimate communication, can damage parent and child relationships, impacting on intimacy, bonding, and a child’s mental health and wellbeing. Care and play activities are the main methods used to build bonds between parent and child. These are hard to replicate with ubiquitous communication technologies when families are separated. Ubiquitous technology, such as the telephone, is easy to use but does not offer engaging ways for a child to interact. Skype (video call), has a higher potential for engagement due to its multimodal nature (audio and visual), therefore is more emotionally expressive. However, to ‘Skype’ someone, a child requires adult support, as the technology is more complex to use than that of a telephone. Thus, neither the telephone or Skype fully meet family needs for communication. Parental-child separation was looked at within parental separation, work travel and illness, to explain how intimacy can be achieved through technology mediated communication systems. Following a Participatory Action Research methodology, utilising methods such as co-design, co-creation, and participatory design, the research discusses five small-scale studies as well as the Trace project, which was the main study of this research. This research addresses communication issues between families through textile-based communication systems which enable intimacy and bonding. It highlights the importance of intimate communications and offers a list of preferred modes of communication for scattered families (multimodal disparate objects that allow for synchronous or asynchronous communications with either the same modes or different modes of input and output). It also outlines key methods for designing new technologies suitable for use in family research (inclusive methods such as co-design, co-creation and participatory design). A better understanding of the participant families’ emotional needs was achieved, by allowing them to become active participants at every stage of the design process (planning, acting, observing, and reflecting), thus producing considerate technologies for remote family communications.

People are increasingly recognizing how their health affects their quality of life, and health is most easily tracked through the use of wearable devices. The goal of this study is to detect and monitor human motion via gait analysis to provide information that will help people enhance their health. After reviewing a range of wearable health-tracking devices, the shoe has been chosen as one of the best device for observing human motion. / Most measurement systems currently used for motion and gait detection are disadvantaged in that they monitor and analyze motion in limited environments and not in real time. Hence, they cannot be used for long-term monitoring and detection. The design of a new, inexpensive, compact and lightweight shoe-integrated platform is elaborated in this thesis. The intelligent shoe system comprises a suite of sensors, a microprocessor board and a wireless communication module. This ideal platform requires no specialized equipment or lab setup, meaning data can be collected not only in the narrow confines of a research lab, but essentially anywhere, whether indoors or outdoors. / Our everyday lives are shaped by a wide variety of motions, some of which can cause injury. Injuries suffered due to falls account for a significant portion of accidents and immediate help should be provided. The intelligent shoe system offers an approach of detecting the user’s motion, especially the movement and direction of a fall. This study used principle component analysis (PCA) to decrease the number of sensors in the prototype (eight pairs) by half (four pairs), so as to reduce computational cost and enhance real-time performance. The resultant system can learn the patterns necessary to detect fall directions from abundant tilted-standing data instead of actual fall data. / Fatigue can result in an abnormal gait, making injury more probable. Hence, detecting fatigue is very important. Experiments have been conducted to determine the relationship between fatigue and gait, and the resultant data are used to analyze the relationship between force information and foot attitude. These findings can help a user detect fatigue and avoid injury. / People carry various kinds of loads in their daily lives, and long-term load-bearing activities can result in motion deformation. Another objective of this study is to determine a load-carrying approach that will decrease such deformation to a great extent. Resampling is used to partition the related data cycle by cycle. A support vector machine (SVM) is adopted to model a user’s normal walking gait and abnormal gaits without loads, which allows for the determination of whether a gait is normal when a load is carried. / To enhance overall health, exercise is commonly adopted, but many forms of exercise are dull. The proposed system’s shoe-computer interface not only helps people obtain detailed lower-body feedback, but can also be used to promote everyday exercise. People are analyzed while sitting for long periods in the workplace, and two interfaces are designed as a result: the shoe-keyboard, in which the feet are used to type words into a computer, and the shoe-write system, in which the foot is used like a hand to write on the ground, with the words displayed on the computer screen. Both of these applications use back-propagation (BP) networks to classify the motions involved. The shoe-keyboard is based on logical coding to map the motion-to-word relationship, and the shoe-write system incorporates an optical tracker to translate motion into information. / 人們現在越來越重視自己的生活質量，而健康方面是最為重要的。穿戴式設備是最好容易使用的檢測健康的設備。本文的目標是通過智能鞋，來檢測步態，對其進行分析和預測，已達到檢測和提高人們的健康水平的要求。 / 現在絕大多數的步態運動檢測系統都不是實時的且長時間工作的。在研究中，基於鞋子的智能系統被提出并得以實現，其具有便宜，緊湊，輕便等的優點。該系統包括壓力和加速度傳感器，處理芯片和無線傳輸模塊。這種設計將滿足日常步態信息的採集，并且把環境影響的因素放置最小，以達到室內室外都可長時間連續實時監測的要求。 / 在本論文中，對一系列日常生活的行為進行檢測和分類，尤其是最為危險的摔倒。本系統通過採用主成分分析，對已有的壓力傳感器進行的了分析，在保證了預測的準確性的前提下，將壓力傳感器由8對減少至4對，大大的降低了運算的次數，使得該系統實時性更好。同時本系統通過傾斜站立獲得的數據并應用于跌倒方向的檢測，並且有著良好的結果。 / 在本文中，對疲勞步態進行的分析，通過設計實驗，來區分不同疲勞程度下人們的步態。壓力信號較為明顯，同時加速度反映出每一步的劇烈程度。最終結果表明，壓力和加速度相輔相成，與疲勞程度的關係也很明顯，基於這種關係，本系統對疲勞程度進行了預測，通過壓力傳感器的信號，預測疲勞的程度，實驗結果也較為理想。 / 長時間的負責對身體的負擔很大，在本文中，著重的分析了在不同負重方式下，步態的變化，並且通過對比正常步態，採用支持向量機進行分類。在分類的過程中，通過重新採樣，將採集的數據轉變為一步為一組的數據，進行分類，最終得到的結果表明，平衡狀態下的負重是最好的。 / 對於健康而言，除了檢查受傷和疲勞，提升自身的身體素質也尤為重要。在本文中，介紹了兩種基於智能鞋的應用，在鍛煉下肢靈活度的同時，也避免了鍛煉的無聊。智能鞋鍵盤是通過腳踝的運動，基於一定的編碼方式，已達到在電腦上輸入文字的方式。智能鞋寫字系統是通過對下腳點的定位結合光電傳感器記錄位移，最終獲得文字輸入。應用BP神經網絡，對腳下點進行了分類，結合壓力傳感器和腿部建模，可以準確的區分30個的基本點的位置，從而獲得每筆的起點。最終完成寫字輸入。 / Tao, Yanbo. / Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2014. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-141). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 12, October, 2016). / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only.

Providing healthcare to the ever-rising elderly population has become a severe challenge and a top priority. Emerging innovations in healthcare, such as remote health monitoring technologies, promise to provide a better quality of care and reduce the cost of healthcare. However, many elderly people reject healthcare innovations. This lack of adoption constitutes a big practical problem because it keeps the elderly from benefiting from technology advances. The phenomenon is even more pronounced among elderly women, who represent the majority of the elderly population. A plethora of studies in the field of technology adoption resulted in sound, but highly generalized theories that are too parsimonious to provide practical insight into the phenomenon of elderly healthcare technology adoption (EHTA). There is a call to arms for novel approaches that facilitate the creation of models that expand technology adoption theories to the specifics of EHTA. This dissertation is a response to this call to arms, and it contributes to modeling practice in the EHTA field. It uses fuzzy cognitive mapping to design a novel mixed-methods modeling approach. Since elderly women constitute the majority of the elderly population, this dissertation treats elderly women's health technology adoption (EWHTA) as the case-in-point.

The health and safety of workers is critically important to all companies, especially those operating in hazardous environments.  Companies typically rely on an array of personal protective equipment to help ensure the safety of their workers, however as technology evolves, a new generation of devices are helping revolutionize the industry.  Wearable technology is now becoming commonplace in both our personal and professional lives.    This study focused on understanding the use of, and attitude towards, various wearable technologies by workers in hazardous environments.  It also explored the change in perception within the workers as these technologies were leveraged and made recommendations for improvement in the future.   A qualitive methodology was applied to understand the people, social, and cultural context.  Participants from industry were interviewed in an inductive and iterative manner, extracting data with an emphasis on the narrative.  Thematic analysis was then utilized to distill the data into Codes, Categories, and ultimately Concepts.   While it became evident that workers had limited personal experience with wearable technology outside of the workplace, they all used it in some manner during their work.  The use of wearable technology was largely motivated by policies and procedures imposed by the companies.  Interestingly, the workers did have an expectation that the user of these devices had a positive impact on their overall safety.  Somewhat surprisingly, the outlook on the future of the technology was not very positive.  There are several opportunities for improvement both to design and implementation of safety related wearable technology, as well as a desire to better leverage artificial intelligence and augmented reality.   Most companies utilize some level of wearable technology to assist in keeping their workers safe.  How workers utilize wearable technology to identify dangerous locations and situations varies greatly from organization to organization, but also between individual workers within any organization.  Although the use of wearable technology within the workplace has been demonstrated to improve safety, the primary motivator for its use is the fact that organization mandate their staff to compliance through policies and standard operating processes. Despite the fact that personal safety should be of utmost importance to any worker, they appear to be so unmotivated to actually utilize the technology available to them that it must be made mandatory through policy.  Within this environment, it becomes very difficult for workers to consider how wearable technology capabilities can be improved in regard to safety-related situational awareness.