Continuous Body Monitoring - Ambient Intelligence for Scientific Discovery - page 202

Continuous Body Monitoring
Jonathan Farringdon and Sarah Nashold
BodyMedia Inc., USA
[e-mail]
1 SenseWear: A Body Worn Sensor System
When a person who usually wears a watch forgets to put it on one day, it is
common for them to look at their wrist anyway expecting the watch to be there.
Without looking or touching to check, they are not aware of the watch's presence
or lack thereof. The watch becomes a part of their expected experience due to its
comfort and continuous utility. It satisfies Thad Starner's definition of a wearable
system as “always with you, always on, and always accessible”[22]. At another
end of the ambient intelligence spectrum the design vision of Stefano Marzano
is one where the “ 'relationship' between us and the technology around us will
be of utmost importance. This relationship will no longer be one of user towards
machine but of person towards 'object-become-subject', thus towards something
that is capable of reacting, of being educated and responding [18].” Amongst the
myriads of applications envisioned in an “ambient culture” by Stefano's team are
the person, their clothing, their home and furniture, and an amenable outside
world [17].
The interdisciplinary team at Bodymedia, Inc. designed the SenseWear arm-
band in the realms of both Starner's and Marzano's ideals. SenseWear is a multi-
sensor system designed for wearing in contact with the body 24 hours a day, 7
days a week, with periodic removal for hygiene. Figure 1 shows the SenseWear
armband being worn. SenseWear is designed to continuously provide, record, and
share information about the state of the wearer through nearly all of their life
activities. The SenseWear armband is an active data collection point and “hub”
of physiological and context based ambient information systems. Like the watch,
it is “always with you, always on, and always accessible”. What SenseWear does
for you, because it's accessible, may not be continuously apparent. Accessibility
to information mediated by the device is completely dependent on particular
associated applications. SenseWear is often used as a continuous silent and un-
obtrusive activity monitor. It's worn and in contact with the skin continuously
because it's doing something for you continuously. We regularly observe that
SenseWear users forget they are wearing the device during normal use. Indeed
on the occasions when a SenseWear user has their armband off they occasionally
reach or feel for it, just like they might with a watch. In the wearable computing
field this takes SenseWear into the realms of Mann's eudaemonic wearable [15].
The SenseWear armband performs continuous monitoring of the person 24/7
in an unobtrusive way and can communicate its findings wirelessly to other de-
vices around it. This has clear benefits for ambient environments and information