Lifelogging in Practice

1. Computing and Material Sciences for LifeLoggingAlan F.Smeaton1, Dermot Diamond1 and Barry Smyth2Adaptive Information Cluster, 1Dublin City University2University College Dublin

2. Lifelogging in Practice • Contemporary lifelogging senses themind, the body, and the place; • Uses a variety of devices to do so; • What they have in common is that they do not seamlessly integrate into our lives; • True lifelogging moves from SciFi to reality when we integrate the lifelogging into the fabric of our lives, and make the “sensor” not only disappear, but part of the environment;

3. AIC Lifelogging • Within the AIC we make the lifelogging devices the clothes we wear by developing materials which have ‘switchable properties’; • These adapt to changing circumstances like wettability, permeability, colour, conductivity and even surface activity; • We use these functionalised fabrics in garments as opposed to discrete sensors and electronic components attached to the fabric of a garment;

4. Smart Materials - Physical • Polypyrrole coatings (conducting polymers) on fabrics mean that the electrical conducting properties of the fabrics themselves change as they are subjected to physical stretching or compression. • If we coat foam or lycra with polypyrrole and use this in wearable garments we functionalise specific locations on the garment to sense stretching, bending, pressure or other fabric movement; • We have integrated these smart materials into clothing to monitor breathing, limb movements and posture in vests, t-shirts, arm bands etc., and in shoes to monitor steps/activity; • Used in applications in sports performance monitoring, posture sensing and in dance/yoga-exercise applications

5. Smart Materials - Chemical • Integrating chemical biosensors into textiles depends on selective reactions happening when directly exposed to a sample, such as a bodily fluid; • Involves issues such as sample handling, calibration, safety and power consumption; • The textile itself is the sensor and can be integrated into suitable apparel. Currently, target users include ambulatory healthcare workers, isolated people, convalescents and patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity and in assessing sports performance and training; • Our primary goal is wearable pH sensing, with subsequent integration of others such as electrolytes, lactate, conductivity etc. The wearable fluidic handling manifold which has to work with ultra-small volumes of body fluids is already developed;

6. Conclusion • On-body logging of a variety of activity indicators can be done using smart materials and fabrics; • Makes the sensing and recording devices almost transparent; • Ultimately, with further development, these will be scalable and will enable a host of new lifelogging possibilities but in a more seamless manner than heretofore;