
NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
Recipient: |
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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 2014 = $346,273.00 |
History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
201 SIKES HALL CLEMSON SC US 29634-0001 (864)656-2424 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
300 Brackett Hall, Box 345702 Clemson SC US 29634-0001 |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): |
Special Projects - CNS, CSR-Computer Systems Research |
Primary Program Source: |
01001415DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
Program Reference Code(s): |
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Program Element Code(s): |
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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.
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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
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