The shirt sounds pretty cool in theory, but does it really work – can it really give an accurate picture of sleep?  The article mentions that “Analyzing sleep stages based on respiration is still considered experimental.”  It does seem that these kids are on to something though.  It is known that respiration changes during sleep in several ways.  For one thing, most of us tend to “breathe into our chest” when awake.  That is, when we take a breath our chest expands and shoulders raise to accommodate the air.  When asleep we revert to abdominal breathing, where our abdominal (belly) area expands to make room for the expanding lungs.  Further, when humans sleep, the pharynx partially collapses causing changes in the timing of breaths as well as the amount of force required to inhale and exhale.  Besides these general changes, more specific changes in respiration occur during different stages of sleep.

There are several ways one could monitor respiration: monitor CO2 levels in exhaled air, record the velocity of air as it enters and exits the nose or mouth… I’m just spit balling here.  The founders of Nyx devices thought of an easier way – monitor the changing volume of the lungs by quantifying changes in the size of the chest /abdominal cavity.  Little information about the technology behind the device is available at the moment, but it looks like stretch sensors are attached to a skin tight t-shirt using iron on patches.  As you breathe, the shirt stretches as your lungs expand with air, and the stretch sensors (capacitors) emit an electrical signal that varies according to the amount of stretch.  The output contains information on the depth and frequency of breathing, which is recorded on a small chip that is also attached to the shirt.  In the morning, upload the data to your computer and the company’s software outputs a “Sleep Depth Chart” and a “Sleep Heat Map” from which you can tell how long you were asleep, and roughly in which stage of sleep you were in.

Pretty cool, but I have some doubts as to the accuracy of the device.  We have all woken up in the middle of the night breathing heavily with a bit of sweat on our brow – how would that read?  According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, “nightmares tend to occur during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep.”  But if I was huffing and puffing in my dream as I ran away from a three-headed monster, my breath pattern would most certainly not match the deep, regular breathing pattern that is characteristic of REM sleep.  Another thing, what if your sheets are particularly static-y one evening and your shirt twists around as you change positions?  In that case the sensors would just be recording how twisted the shirt is.  Similarly, what if you desire to measure your sleep cycles but you have a sizable beer gut?  By the time you wrestle an Under Armor shirt down over your belly the sensors would already be stretched, would any information even be distinguishable from the baseline signal?

These concerns may not matter though, if your main goal is simply to measure higher level sleep attributes.  A co-inventor of the shirt, Dr. Matt Bianchi, says that the shirt will be very useful when evaluating the sleep patterns of insomniacs.  The MIT article notes that “Bianchi’s previous research has shown that people with insomnia often underestimate how much they sleep, so he wants to determine whether giving them an objective way to measure sleep will help them reassess their condition and improve quality of sleep.”  So even if the device isn’t yet accurate enough to give reliable information on stages of sleep, simply knowing how much time spent sleeping (in any stage) might be useful.

Okay okay, so my concerns might be overly nit-picky.  I do, though, have one final question: who wants to sleep in Under Armor anyway?  That stuff is tight.  If I had to go to bed in clothes that tight I wouldn’t even be able to sleep so there wouldn’t be anything interesting to record.  Regardless, this is a pretty cool concept and, if it makes it to production, will add to the growing battery of products that are available to monitor sleep at home.

[image credits: myinnobox]
[video credit:MIT Technology Review]
[sources: Nyx Devices, MIT Technology Review]

RFIDs are just little coils of wire that help us track things, but what happens when we start tracking ourselves?

RFID tags are already embedded in millions of products you buy…and your children could be next. In the ongoing debate over privacy and surveillance, Radio Frequency ID tags occupy a very interesting position. They are invaluable when tracking goods, allowing modern corporations like Wal-Mart to manage their inventories quickly and cheaply. If applied to humans, such ID tags could help with disaster relief, security, and emergency healthcare . Yet privacy advocates worry that tracking humans with this technology could also lead to major abuses by governments, criminals, and businesses. Even trusting individuals baulk at the idea of tagging people like cattle. Unless, of course, it’s for a really good cause. Which is why, inevitably, we see so many programs looking to test RFID tags on children, often to prevent them from being abducted. Schools the world over continue to toy with the ideas of placing tags on students to help monitor their attendance and keep them safe. Are we raising a generation that feels comfortable being tagged and tracked?

Schools in Japan, the UK, and other countries have been conducting trials for RFID tracking of students for years. Usually a small RFID tag, which looks vaguely like a maze of metal, will be embedded in clothing or a badge. Electronic receivers at doors interact with the tags and a central system keeps track of student locations and movements. Such a system is set to be tested in Contra Costa County in California, where preschoolers will be given a jersey to wear with a RFID inside. The school hopes to save money by keeping teachers from spending time on taking attendance and allow them to focus on educating the kids.

The testing on very young children is typical. Preschoolers are like a swarm of bees, hard to keep track of visually, and with much the same temperament to being herded. Automated attendance can save a lot of time. Furthermore, at this young age it is much more dangerous for children to left unwatched or allowed to wander on their own. RFID is seen as increasing student safety.

Indeed, in non-school applications, safety is the main selling point for RFID based child tracking systems. Years ago, Denmark’s Legoland amusement park began offering parents the option of a RFID bracelet that allows them to locate their child in the park at any time through a mobile phone text message. The Legoland system is sold as helping parents find wandering kids and preventing childhood abduction.

Honestly though, I find RFID’s safety arguments rather lacking. Anyone, including the child itself, could simply remove the article of clothing, or bracelets. Some systems use infrared sensors to sound an alarm whenever someone crosses a doorway without the appropriate RFID tag, but this requires every single person to carry an RFID at all times. In any case, it seems to me that RFID embedded clothes are a thin barrier against any sort of kidnapping or abuse.

Maybe we could get really safe and implant RFID chips under a child’s skin. We’ve seen that technology before. In the future such tags could be boosted to allow a child to be tracked wherever they go. If we really wanted, there’s no reason why children’s locations couldn’t be monitored every second of every day. Kidnapping could become a thing of the past.

But its end would come at a high price. Privacy advocates warn that the more data we embed in automated systems the more vulnerable we come to unwarranted tracking of that information. Criminals might scan the information encoded in RFID tags and use this to defraud or rob. Governments may track their citizens and impose undue restrictions upon their movements and actions. Businesses could become hyper vigilant in monitoring our habits to bombard us with custom-fit ads. We should rightfully fear where such invasions of privacy might lead us.

Yet I think our children are already moving beyond such fears. We worry about RFID tags giving away our locations publicly, but many young people already do so with geo-tagging on Facebook, or applications like Twitter and FourSquare. We worry about businesses collecting data on us, but almost every company already does this online, and children born in the last decade have never known it to be otherwise. We worry about governments tracking us, but our children are born in a time when threats of crime and terrorism compel us to wade through long security lines at airports, ball games, and even schools. Again, children born in the last decade have never known it to be otherwise. Even if we weren’t considering using RFID tags to track kids at schools to keep them safe, we use tagging and tracking methods so often everywhere else that we are conditioning them to accept such measures more easily than we would.

Those attitudes may serve them well, because I think it’s only going to get crazier from now on. Remember how RFID tags were invaluable tools in tracking inventory for stores? Well, chances are they’ll become invaluable in a lot more places very soon. We are slowly (or should I say quickly?) building an Internet of Things – giving items connectivity to track their locations, status, and histories and to communicate with each other. Right now, many of our mobile phones are constantly using GPS and wireless communications to provide us with valuable information and services. What happens when most of the items on our body are doing the same thing? Whether or not we put RFID tags in children clothes today, the next decade may see us all floating in a cloud of RFID embedded goods.

The old mindset is that we protect ourselves by keeping our actions and locations private. The new mindset may be that we protect ourselves by limiting the importance of that information.

Does someone know you go to the same pizza place all the time? Everyone does, it’s a common fact on Facebook – heck, you get free coupons from FourSquare because of it. Can someone easily find out what items you just bought at Wal-Mart? Sure, they could scan your RFID tags…or they could just check out your Twitter feed where you cover such things in detail.

In my grandparents’ day I don’t think someone could have easily gotten directions to their home without asking them, or asking a friend who would have told them someone was looking for them. Now, people can find efficient routes to nearly anywhere in just seconds using online maps. Would that scare my ancestors? Maybe, but I think such terror would be silly. The idea of RFID tags, and continuous tracking/monitoring scares me. In the future, perhaps my children will be kind enough not to think my fear quite so absurd.

[sources: RFID Journal, Information Week]

China requires its mobile phone companies to report on "criminal activity" including lewd txts.

Censorship in China just got a little kinky. Chinese mobile phone users wanting to send that special someone a scandalous text message should think twice. According to the Telegraph, China’s two largest mobile phone companies (China Mobile and China Unicom) are complying with police demands to report any and all text messages that contain illegal activity. While this is ostensibly to help combat violent crime and terrorism, pornography and “inapropriate messages” are also included. China Mobile alone has 500+ million customers and handles 1.7+ billion text messages a day. Accordingly, the telecom companies are using software filters to automatically block a users text service once it detects a risque message. The same would happen for texts which indicated a terrorist activity or other crime. The sheer scope of this censorship is daunting and its extension into sexting is alarming. China is monitoring billions of texts every day for criminal activity…and the definition of “criminal” is loose enough to be terrifying.

Extension government monitoring of personal communication isn’t restricted to China of course. The Department of Homeland Security in the US has routinely tapped phone lines (illegally in some cases) and Europe’s Project Indect is going to be a vast undertaking to examine all levels of personal activity and online communication. Most of these projects are geared towards “combating terrorism” but China’s example shows that the same systems used to detect violent intent can be twisted to report on all kinds of “thought crime.” One hopes that a democratically elected government wouldn’t take the same approach as an autocratic one and seek to curb the freedom of its citizens. Still, there’s no longer any doubt that mobile phones communications are vulnerable to this type of oppression.

The Global Times, a major Chinese periodical, recently reported that automatic blocks for SMS messages have extended beyond the contents of the message. Any user sending texts to large numbers of recipients will have their service blocked for 24 hours. This action has been taken to curb the rise of spam texts, which is a legitimate and growing problem in the country. Considering the role that mass-texts play in modern civil disobedience, however, the measure may finally help China stifle protests. It’s already an inconvenience to average users who simply wish to send well wishes to loved ones on holidays.

Those violating the effective ban on sexting face much more than simple inconvenience. According to the Southern Metropolis Weekly (via Telegraph) a man in Dongguan whose service was blocked after a sext was told that he had to report to the police and identify himself before his service would be reinstated. HOLY CRAP. Not only is your service going to be blocked, you then have to turn yourself in for what may constitute a crime. All for simply sending a (uncouth) personal message. That’s nine kinds of wrong. As discussed in the Global Times, it’s possible that all mobile phones will have to be registered with a citizen’s real name. So even if you don’t want to report to the police they’ll still find you.

I try not to wear my conspiracy hat too often (aluminum foil is terribly flimsy) but this latest bout of Chinese censorship has me worried along many different angles. I’m alarmed that a government is lumping sexuality in with terrorism. I’m alarmed that the tools by which protesters can organize themselves are also primed to restrict and monitor their activities. I’m alarmed that any company would help target its own customers as criminals. But most of all I’m concerned about the effective destruction of anonymity.

Privacy is changing. Social networking, life logging, CCTV cameras – these technologies are recording and reporting on our lives in ways that would have been outrageous just a generation ago. Many companies are already tracking our finances and online activities to better target us as consumers. We even have iPhone Apps to check your date’s criminal history. But coupled with the arrival of new torrents of personal information is the benefit of being lost in the crowd. As many of the comments on this blog will prove, Google may know what you like to buy, but they aren’t going to let me track you down when you make an asinine remark about my writing. That’s the boon (and bane) of anonymity. Computers and software algorithms are watching you, but the rest of us really can’t.

The China automatic block of sexting is a reminder that such protection is tenuous. All it takes is the consent of telecom companies and the acceptance of citizens to strip away anonymity and effectively use technology to restrict your freedom. Yeah…there’s not much more to it than that.

I really do believe that biometric security checks, CCTV surveillance, even online monitoring could be used to make us safer from violent crime without oppressing us. Only if, however, such measures are themselves constantly examined and regulated. There’s no doubt that we have the ability to monitor each other and that ability isn’t going to disappear. We can’t hide, not even in a billion text messages a day. The question is, will we choose to follow China’s example of censorship and restriction…or will we find another way?

[photo credit: modified from Wiki Commons]

There are so many security camera filtering programs (both publicly and privately funded) that it may be hard to see what makes Samurai unique. First,it’s name is one of the most convoluted acronyms I’ve seen recently: Suspicious and Abnormal behavior Monitoring Using a netwoRk of cAmeras for sItuational awareness enhancement. More importantly, Samurai will work with a variety of sensors (not just CCTV cameras) including mobile wearable audio and video recorders (attached to security teams) to enhance observation. It will focus on real-time images to and provide constant context-based data to said security personnel. System operators can also train Samurai using feedback so that it does not provide false alarms every time a custodian adjusts a trash can or a toddler throws a tantrum. If a threat is identified Samurai can track it through multiple camera POVs and lighting levels, relying on shapes and movement patterns to identify people.

Early November saw the Samurai Project team present an end-user workshop to demonstrate its current capabilities. The EC found Samurai promising enough to have guaranteed it funding through the end of 2011. This is certainly a Europe wide endeavor – research is also performed at the University of Verona and there are project partners in countries from France to Estonia. Still, a disproportionate number of those partners, and the head research team is located in the UK. Britain seems to be placing themselves at the forefront of government-funded smart surveillance technology.

As always when discussing surveillance, I have to wonder about the impact about such constant monitoring on our society. Is the EC worried about the appearance of being too similar to Big Brother? Well, the Samurai Project brochure seems needlessly fun and hip… so maybe.  Certainly the concepts of privacy have already shifted some with the advent of social networking. Future generations will have to become more comfortable with observation if they continue to fight against terrorism, drug trafficking, and random acts of violence. Undoubtedly, the boundaries of government or private intrusion into individual privacy will be the subject of an ongoing (and loud) debate. I think the choice in naming this project was somewhat prescient. From one point of view the samurai were a noble and honorable class of warriors that protected the public. From another view, they were feudal tyrants that as often oppressed their vassals as saved them. I’m sure that those in favor or against government monitoring feel the same way about smart security surveillance.

[photo credit: Samurai Project, EC]
[video credit: New Scientist via Prof. Gong at Queen Mary University, London]

Toumaz's Sensium is a new way to collect, analyze, and transmit data from body sensors.

Britain’s Toumaz Technology has developed Sensium, a device that allows data collected from various sensors on your body to be collected, processed, and transmitted via wireless signals in a single network. They don’t make the sensors, but they allow you to synchronize the signal from each one. That’s a key ingredient in getting better care. It also has huge applications in sports and fitness. A small Belgian company working with an Italian football club (read here: soccer) has been using earlier generation bulky devices to record the timing of their players movement, stress levels, and other factors. With their own algorithms they are able to predict the mental state of their players. They are now looking to use Sensium to bring a non-intrusive, real-time element to this technique. Knowing the precise time and way to field players could be a winning edge.

Singularity Hub was impressed with Toumaz Technology before, so much so that we hunted down its CEO, Keith Errey, for an exclusive phone interview. From that conversation we were able to get some great insights into how the company will change the way that we monitor our health. Hear about the exciting new information after the break.

“There is a whole new set of things that are gonna be understood and [help us] learn about how we actually are and operate and respond as physical beings.” — Keith Errey June 30, 2009

I am stuck on Sensium because Sensium’s stuck on me

Toumaz Technology started off with a key concept: the signals from the body create a ‘human space’ and if you want to operate in the human space you have to be unobtrusive, robust, and continuous. Sensors are already being crammed all over your body, so the device that interacts with them needs to add as little to that problem as possible. That’s why Sensium is an ultra-low power device. Each chip works on one tenth to one twentieth the power of a standard Bluetooth headset. Yet, even at low powers the devices can send a stream of data at 50kbps. And that’s continuous, not burst, transmission, meaning that each sensor is correlated with others down to the millisecond level. This information is sent from the device to a base receiver. That receiver can then communicate with other stations to share data on a larger network (a hospital, for instance).

The Sensium body-area network

But wait, ultra-low power also means ultra-low mass, and a tiny device can do things others can’t. As part of its ongoing research and development, Toumaz is beginning testing of a ‘smart patch’ version. This patch would be a disposable band-aid style device that could be applied to a patient. For four or five days (the average hospital stay in the Western world and the lifespan of the Sensium chip battery) all sensor data could be collected and routed to doctors in real time. Imagine, having a doctor open her PDA and have access to each of her patients vital signs. Or, that same PDA could have a program that alerts her to changes in a condition. No more paging doctors when something goes wrong. The doctor could see when things were about to go wrong and get there before they do.

The band-aid version of Sensium isn’t some pie in the sky dream. It’s happening soon. The day before our interview with Keith Errey, the prototypes were off to the converters to begin a large production. In August, clinical trials will begin at hospitals associated with Imperial College, London. Remember that ultra-low power also means ultra-low costs. According to Mr. Errey, the smart patches could cost “two digits, maybe less” to manufacture. While hospitals may be willing to pay quite a bit more, the low production costs mean that this device could have a nearly universal presence in Western hospitals within the next five years.

Part of a Whole

The Sensium Life Pebble from Toumaz

While the smart patch is coming soon, the Sensium Life Pebble is already here. This non-disposable version of the sensor networking hub is housed in a more robust shell and can have batteries replaced. It also has three-dimensional accelerometers to track motion. According to Errey, this device won’t cost considerably more than the smart patch because it’s “basically the same functionality.” The Life Pebble is days away from CE marketing approval, meaning that Toumaz can start selling it all over the European Union, either to health professionals or just your average citizen. Unlike hospitals, which already have systems in place to transmit vital signs, your home is an untapped mine of health information. Life Pebble will help you access that data.

As impressive as the various Sensium devices are, however, they are just part of the entire Sensium system. What has impressed me with Toumaz is the forward-thinking problem solving inherent in their design. Sensium is as much a software and networking protocol as it is a silicon chip. Toumaz has devised ways of working around signal blocking, switching channels, and the myriad of other forms of interference that could impede the ultra-low wireless communication. That’s a good thing if you don’t want a heart-attack to go unnoticed.

The actual network has limitations. The range for wireless communications is about five to ten meters from the Sensium chip to the receiver, the same for Bluetooth more or less. From that receiver, the signal can be sent longer distances to a relay station, computer, or other network hub. According to Errey the network will utilize a star networking scheme with 8 chips to a single receiver. Each chip could handle about 6 different kinds of sensors. While this is actually impressive for today’s technology, I wonder how this will hold up in an emerging hospital environment that will have more technology and more patients per square foot than current ones. Undoubtedly the network will have to advance with demands.

Your Body in the Future

While the model environment for health monitoring may seem to be a hospital, that will likely change very soon. As Singularity Hub has stated before, the future holds promise of almost continuous monitoring, whether you are in good health or poor. When asked if Toumaz Technology is prepared for this trend, Errey says “Absolutely…The requirement to understand your own physical state–the well being or sickness, however you want to define it– is pretty universal.” In Toumaz’s opinion, even if you aren’t an Italian soccer star, you’re going to want to know how your body is doing.

Which is part of the reason why Toumaz has given Texas Instruments (TI) a distributing license for the Sensium hardware. Part of that partnership will see Toumaz and TI develop an open source, or open API type protocol to allow users to design their own method of using the monitoring device. We could see third party applications that allow us to design how we use common sensors in our homes or at work. Wouldn’t it be nice to know if your reflexes were too impaired to drive, or if your child actually was too sick to go to school?

The continuous monitoring of our actions could lead to some very interesting insights into how our bodies work. Like those Italian footballers, we could learn a lot about how we work, and use that to develop all kinds of new health plans or technologies. Errey pointed out that, “The reason this generally hasn’t been recognized to date is that it’s been too expensive to have this kind of knowledge, and it was always taken in the context of a pathological state. You were always strapped up and monitored in a hospital…What it’s like to be healthy and active, that’s working with new data.”

Toumaz has already helped gather data for improving athletic performance.

This new data could be collected by individuals on themselves, but it could also be sent to doctors, employers, children, spouses, or the government. So we have to ask ourselves, who owns the data about your health? “That’s the 64 million dollar question,” says Errey. “At the technology layer itself I don’t think there’s an issue…There’s an inherent privacy in the system.” The Sensium network is hard to eavesdrop on, and there are software encryptions available. Built-in encryption will be a staple in the next generation of the devices.

However, the data has to be stored somewhere. Patients or doctors, or whoever will want access to it. “At that point, these questions become very very pertinent…very serious. Who do you trust with the data? Who owns the data? It’s going to be a very interesting debate.” Just to highlight the scope of that debate, Toumaz Technology LTD is developing partnerships not only with TI but also with companies in the veterinary, military, and law enforcement sectors.

It’s too early to tell if Toumaz will be THE monitoring network technology of the future. Even Errey admits that there is more than one way to approach the challenge. Sensium, however, is the only ultra-low power device of its kind, and would seem to be the least obtrusive. No matter which technology is eventually used however, the trend is clear: we’re going to be watching our bodies a whole lot closer. As that data is collected we’ll all have to worry about not only what the data means, but who gets to look at it. Just as we hope to learn more about ourselves, we may want to keep more hidden from others. If not for our own pride, then to avoid the prejudice that could come with the information.

Just to show that Keith Errey (top far right) isn't all business, here's a pic of him with comedian Rowan Atkinson (top center). God help us if they start trying to monitor Mr. Bean.

The eScale will send your weight via cell phone signal to the Internet. Better start working out!

If Reality TV has taught us anything about weight loss it’s that the more people who are watching you, the quicker you’ll drop the pounds. Social pressure is a key ingredient in the eScale from Body Trace. This bathroom scale comes equipped with a modified cell phone module allowing it to broadcast your weight to a Body Trace “motivational webpage.” There you, or your avatar, can display the fluctuations in your weight with all the pride or shame that you want. Along with a calorie calculator, BMI graph, and health tips, the Body Trace motivational page allows you to connect with friends and strangers to share in your experience. It’s social networking meets weight loss obsession.

This isn’t the first web-based weight loss device Singularity Hub has seen. There are smart toilets that will analyze your weight as you pee, as well as analyze it for your doctor. There are big differences with Body Trace, however. First, the eScale has a GSM network module, so it connects directly to the Body Trace server straight out of the box. No WiFi or other setup necessary. You just pop in the batteries (six D-cells included) and step on the eScale. It’s that simple. Second, Body Trace is really pushing the networking aspects of their motivational page. Looking at the screen shot, I am reminded of Facebook’s wall interface. It’s a nice concept, and I have no doubt that being able to share the weight loss struggle will really help some people achieve their goals.

The Body Trace motivational page allows you to publicly (and anonymously) share your weight with friends and strangers.

The only real question I have is, is it worth the price? The eScale itself is fairly cheap (~$120 USD) but  the motivational page, and all the online services come at a rate of $20 for 3 months. If you pre-order you get three months free, and referrals also earn you three months, but any way you slice it, you’ll eventually be paying Body Trace above and beyond the price of the scale. If you’re thinking about splitting that cost among different members of your household, think again. Each scale is good for one customer only. Straight from the Body Trace FAQ (emphasis mine):

“Multiple eScales can co-exist in the same household and we actually suggest to have one for everybody in the family. Only one person can use a given eScale, so if there are more members of the family that keep track of their weight, then using multiple eScales is a good idea. You can even mark each other as “Friends” so you can keep track of each others success. “

Even at a total price for the year at $200 ($120 for the eScale and $80 for the service) I think people would pay, but to me it’s pretty outrageous that you can’t share the scale. Would including that modality really have been that hard? Also, while the sample motivational page is ads free, I think including ads is a better choice than charging clients for access. Most weight loss products would pay premium rates for ad space in a weight-loss social network. And few social networks charge for membership. I get the feeling that Body Trace has a promising and innovative product, but may be lacking in long term business acumen.

Which is unfortunate, because I think Body Trace is otherwise a very intelligent and interesting company. If nothing else you should read through their blog because it is a great look at the hi-tech entrepreneurial process. The social networking meme is one of the defining paradigms of the upcoming generation. A generation, if we are to believe the experts, will be mostly comprised of the obese. The eScale and the Body Trace motivational page make a lot of sense. They also fit in with a larger trend of body monitoring that will define our lives as technology and health care merge further. Whether you are talking scales or toilets, advanced health care is coming into our bathrooms and information is going to be streaming out. No matter how you measure it, however, tracking your weight loss and sharing that data will likely carry a heavy price tag.