Award Abstract # 1314342
CSR: Large: Collaborative research: Computational Jewelry for Mobile Health

NSF Org: CNS
Division Of Computer and Network Systems
Recipient: CLEMSON UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date: September 9, 2013
Latest Amendment Date: August 26, 2014
Award Number: 1314342
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Marilyn McClure
mmcclure@nsf.gov
 (703)292-5197
CNS
 Division Of Computer and Network Systems
CSE
 Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Start Date: October 1, 2013
End Date: September 30, 2017 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $500,000.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $524,680.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2013 = $178,407.00
FY 2014 = $346,273.00
History of Investigator:
  • Jacob Sorber (Principal Investigator)
    jsorber@clemson.edu
  • Kelly Caine (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Clemson University
201 SIKES HALL
CLEMSON
SC  US  29634-0001
(864)656-2424
Sponsor Congressional District: 03
Primary Place of Performance: Clemson University
300 Brackett Hall, Box 345702
Clemson
SC  US  29634-0001
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
03
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): H2BMNX7DSKU8
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): Special Projects - CNS,
CSR-Computer Systems Research
Primary Program Source: 01001314DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001415DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 7925, 9150, 9178, 9251
Program Element Code(s): 171400, 735400
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.070

ABSTRACT

The advent of mobile health (mHealth) technology brings great opportunity to improve quality of life, improve individual and public health, and reduce healthcare costs. Although mHealth devices and applications are proliferating, many challenges remain to provide the necessary usability, manageability, interoperability, availability, security, and privacy. The goal of this project is to engineer the tools for, and lay the scientific foundation of, secure wearable mHealth. In the process, the investigators are developing a general framework for body-area pervasive computing, centered around health-monitoring and health-management applications.

The vision is that computational jewelry, in a form like a bracelet or pendant, will provide the properties essential for successful body-area mHealth networks. These devices coordinate the activity of the body-area network and provide a discreet means for communicating with their wearer. Such devices complement the capabilities of a smartphone, bridging the gap between the type of pervasive computing possible with a mobile phone and that enabled by wearable computing.

The interdisciplinary team of investigators is designing and developing 'Amulet', an electronic bracelet and a software framework that enables developers to create (and users to easily use) safe, secure, and efficient mHealth applications that fit seamlessly into everyday life. The research is determining the degree to which computational jewelry offers advantages in availability, reliability, security, privacy, and usability, and developing techniques that provide these properties in spite of the severely-constrained power resources of wearable jewelry.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

Note:  When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

Josiah Hester, Travis Peters, Tianlong Yun, Ron Peterson, Joseph Skinner, Barghav Golla, Kevin Storer, Steven Hearndon, Kevin Freeman, Sarah Lord, Ryan Halter, David Kotz, Jacob Sorber "Amulet: An Energy-Efficient, Multi-Application Wearable Platform" The 14th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2016) , 2016
Kelly Caine "Local Standards for Sample Size at CHI" The SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems , 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858498
Kelly Caine "Privacy is Healthy" IEEE Pervasive Computing , v.15 , 2016 , p.14 10.1109/MPRV.2016.61
Motti, V. G. & Caine, K. E. "An Overview of Wearable Applications for Healthcare: Requirements and Challenges" Adjunct Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers , 2015 , p.635 10.1145/2800835.2809436
Valdez, R. S., Holden, R. J., Caine, K., Madathil, K., Mickelson, R., Lovett Novak, L., & Werner, N. "Patient Work as a Maturing Approach Within HF/E: Moving Beyond Traditional Self-Management Applications" Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting , v.60 , 2016 , p.657 10.1177/1541931213601151
Vivian Genaro Motti, Kelly Caine "Towards a Visual Vocabulary for Privacy Concepts" Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting , v.60 , 2016 , p.1078 10.1177/1541931213601249

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The Amulet project sought to develop computational jewelry -- that is, a wearable computing device that is convenient and secure -- in the service of health and wellness. Specifically, the “Amulet” is an electronic wristband that serves as a secure computational platform, able to run multiple health-related applications while maintaining a secure body-area network of related mobile-health devices for sensing and actuation, and presenting its wearer visual feedback. With a focus on mHealth applications, Amulet emphasizes security, privacy, and long battery life.

 

The Amulet team developed a series of prototype devices and an application development kit that includes tools to help predict and optimize energy usage and thus battery lifetime.  The latest prototype Amulet can run multiple applications with secure isolation among applications, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communications to a companion smartphone and to wearable sensor devices, several in-built sensors (temperature, ambient UV light, sound, acceleration, and gyroscope), a microSD card for storing data, a display, two LEDs, haptic vibration feedback, two buttons, and a capacitive-touch slider.  Experiments show that the prototype has battery lifetime lasting weeks or even months, depending on the application, and the interactive resource-profiling tool predicts battery lifetime within 6–10% of the measured lifetime. The Amulet prototype hardware and software is freely available for non-commercial use by researchers and others interested in exploring the potential for wearable technology.

 

The team also improved the physical design and user interface. They conducted studies to determine how patients – or other users – would interact with the Amulet using graphical user interfaces. They also explored alternative locations for on-body interactions with wearable devices (e.g., head-mounted devices) and gained an understanding of how context impacts the users’ experience. In addition, they gathered input from users about their privacy concerns and, using this information, generated a visual vocabulary for communicating privacy concepts on small displays, such as the Amulet.

 

Finally, the team also developed and piloted methods to use the Amulet for measuring stress, leveraging internal and external wearable sensors to collect real-time, continuous measurements of the Amulet wearer’s physiological indications of stress, and combining those measurements with the wearer’s in-the-moment perception of stress to develop machine-learning models that, when complete, will enable the development of Amulet applications that conduct real-time interventions related to the wearer’s current level of stress.

 

The Amulet project continues, under renewed funding. The team is refining the hardware and software of the prototype, expanding its pilot studies for stress monitoring, exploring the interface and interaction mechanisms, developing wearable external sensors to measure heart-rate variability and galvanic skin response, and collaborating with a medical doctor to develop applications in support of elderly patients.

 

For more information, track the project’s progress at amulet-project.org.


 

 


Last Modified: 11/07/2017
Modified by: Jacob Sorber

Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.

Print this page

Back to Top of page