Continuous Body Monitoring - Ambient Intelligence for Scientific Discovery - page 205

clinical weight management SenseWear is usually used as a passive continuous
data gatherer. The data is analyzed after the fact. In the weight management
setting for example, a user may wear the armband all day, simply going about
their business. Importantly, the armband does not restrict the user, but is sim-
ply constantly collecting data about them and their activity. At the end of each
day, for example, the user retrieves the data to another system such as a PC
where the data is analyzed and acted upon. In the clinical setting, experimenters
can deploy subjects with SenseWear and have it collect data outside the lab for
up to fourteen days. The subjects may keep diaries as well, but SenseWear is
an objective observer, providing automatic journaling of the wearer's activities
and body states. At the end of a study SenseWear provides a data set for the
experimenter to manipulate in numerous ways not possible in real time. Many
examples of SenseWear in real-life use are given later in this chapter.
Real-time data becomes more important for reactive ubiquitous devices and
environments. In these cases, SenseWear is equipped with a short-range trans-
ceiver and can communicate with similarly equipped devices. SenseWear units
are uniquely addressable. The transceiver is currently commercially available in
additional sensory products such as weight-scales. In this case the user stands
on the scale, and their weight is transmitted to the armband, where it is inserted
into the data stream.

2 Architecture and System

SenseWear is a tool - a body worn, wearer focused, sensor and data hub that can
perform an application on its own, or be part of a much more extensive system.
Two generic frameworks are presented: stand-alone and supervised.

2.1 Supervised

Figure 3 illustrates SenseWear's place in a large-scale system. There is no spe-
cific application in this particular system view. All components are information
systems, thus are customizable to specific applications. This particular system
architecture illustration considers numerous SenseWear users wearing the arm-
band and being constantly monitored. Elsewhere, connected by the internet,
clinicians, care givers, fitness professionals or other concerned parties monitor
the wearers after the raw sensor data has been analyzed. The Apex fitness system
(described in Sec. 5) is an example of this architecture deployed commercially.

2.2 Stand Alone

A stand-alone system, with optional home PC support would have an archi-
tecture shown in Fig. 4. Third party devices can log their sensor readings or
other pertinent information amongst the continuous armband data by using the
transceiver kit. SenseWear research customers also can add the transceiver to
their own devices.