Triangle Projects case study:

Body sensor fitness monitoring device

In the latest Triangle Project with Imperial College, a fitness monitoring device has emerged from the study of a lightweight network of intelligent sensors on the human body.

Body Sensing Network (or BSN for short) originated at Imperial College in 2002. Under the direction of Professor Guang-Zhong Yang, it seeks to develop the body-monitoring potential of tiny computers the size of a pin head, miniature microsensors and wireless network technology.

From the medical research perspective it was quickly understood that there could be many useful areas in which lightweight miniature ‘wearable’ networks of body monitors might be used to read and then transmit biometric data—for example as lifestyle consumer products or valuable monitoring systems for the sick or elderly.

However the leap from medical research to the realisation of such specific external applications would require additional skills and research. This Triangle Project set out to investigate design applications for such technology. InnovationRCA organised the study in two phases, commissioning RCA graduates and former Helen Hamlyn Research Associates to work first on concept research and then on product design.

Indri Tulusan, a graduate of RCA Design Products, led the user research and concept generation phase through her design firm TEKOLondon with partner Anna Hiltenen. Personal fitness monitoring was the application that emerged as the most promising commercial option for BSN from the exercise.

Product designer Mark Champkins, a graduate of RCA Industrial Design Engineering, was subsequently given the task of realising a physical product that would show how stylish and lightweight one of the wearable network ‘nodes’ might be. The result took the form of a shrimp-shaped device worn behind the ear.

This single node could itself contain several monitoring elements, in this case tracking the wearer’s heart rate, blood oxygen levels and motion. A network of such nodes (not proposed in this project) would involve others distributed about the body to monitor different physiological parameters—for example an electrocardiogram or blood pressure monitor—and all would be capable of communicating wirelessly and intelligently with one another before transmitting the resulting data to a PDA or some other external device via Bluetooth.

By choosing an application to do with lifestyle and fitness it was possible to maximise some of Imperial’s innovations such as monitoring heart rate with a comfortable and unobtrusive device — comparing very favourably with existing products that depend on a more restrictive chest-band. In addition, Imperial’s discovery that accelerometers attached to the head can provide data for diagnosing an unusual gait made this another good reason for developing an earpiece node.

All of the sensors, the computing functions and the radio frequency transmitter could be contained on a single SIM card-sized circuit inside the earpiece, which would be powered with a hearing aid battery. According to John Cass, the Imperial College Business Development Manager who is leading on the Triangle Projects initiative, the next phase of the project will see a functional prototype that accommodates the miniaturised electronics.

Meanwhile Imperial Innovations as established a spin-out company as a vehicle to commercialise the many emerging and different applications of Body Sensor Network.