I-Corps: Biosymbiotic wearable biosensing devices

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a new class of wearable devices for investigation into long-term physiological processes. For many athletes, recovery, and training management are continuous processes that takes place daily and encompasses multiple processes such as training, sleep, and nutrition. Lack of proper load management and recovery may cause increased levels of stress hormones in the body and affect the athlete’s ability to perform at a high level. To provide holistic insight into recovery and health, continuous aggregation of multimodal information paired with a powerful analytics backend is an essential aspect of wearable devices. Many competitors in the market focus on limited sensing modalities and application locations. Additionally, these devices do not provide users with continuous measurement capabilities and need to be recharged periodically, leaving gaps in data, and reducing the accuracy of insights provided by data analytics. The proposed system addresses these problems by bridging the gaps between high-fidelity and long-term sensing capabilities. The proposed device enables sensing modalities such as sub-millikelvin resolution temperature, muscular strain, bioimpedance, PPG, ECG, movement, and sweat rate in to provide holistic insight into health parameters relevant to sports performance and recovery. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a new class of wearable devices called biosymbiotic devices that do not require recharging utilizing power casting technology and pre-existing commercial scalable fabrication techniques. The devices feature the first demonstration of a wireless and battery-free wearable device that may operate at long distances, is completely customized to the user, and is able to collect clinical-grade fidelity biosignals indefinitely. The devices utilize advances in electronics, materials, electromagnetics, and electromechanics to create an ultra-lightweight, conformal system that features multimodal sensors and wearability that is virtually imperceptible to the user, enabling long-term and continuous collection capabilities. Through this project, the goal is to establish product adoption criteria and validate commercialization plans through customer discovery. Specifically, the team will investigate a device configuration geared towards the target market of prosumer and professional sports athletes that want to optimize training and recovery through unique insight into their physiology. Additionally, the plan is to integrate sensing capabilities into the system while developing user-friendly performance analytics algorithms and interfaces to deliver these analytics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.