A survey of wearable sensor networks in health and entertainment

Wearable sensor technology is a growing field as more clinicians, researchers, and developers learn of the potential benefits and possibilities it offers.1 From athletes to the elderly, those with medical conditions or injuries will soon benefit from wearable technology if they have not done so already. Basic forms of wearable medical technology have already been made commercially available over the last couple of years. Examples of these include electronics or smart phone applications that encourage physical activity by measuring the user’s daily step count, but this is merely a taste of what’s to come.2 Wearable technology can also come in the form of a Wearable Sensor Network (WSN) also known as a wearable Body Sensor Network (BSN), or even a Wearable Health Monitoring System (WHMS).3–5 In a WSN, multiple sensors communicate to one another to form a network, and the more sensors used in a system, the greater the potential that system will have to offer.3 In the medical field, future WSNs will have the capability to capture data needed to diagnose serious medical problems with greater precision than that of current methods, and may even allow clinicians to find solutions where there previously were none. The entertainment industry will be impacted by WSNs as well. Both game developers and cinematographers have long used motion capture systems to give animated characters complicated, yet organic motions, and these realistic motions have become expected from consumers of today’s media. Additionally, gamers desire a higher level of immersion in the games they play, as proven by the success of interactive virtual reality gear, and wearable sensors can only further add to that experience as more of their body motion can be captured and transferred into the virtual world. Wearable technology will allow for more affordable motion capture option for gamers, game developers, and cinematographers, in addition to offering greater freedom than that of conventional optical marker tracking systems. Sensor technology has improved such measuring devices such as electrodes, gyroscopes, and accelerometers are now affordable, lightweight, and compact. These attributes are required for wearable sensing systems as they generally must remain unobtrusive to the user. It is for the aforementioned reasons that WSNs are the obvious path to accurate, personalized healthcare, and for meeting the needs of today’s entertainment industry. These systems are likely to change the way in which the majority of clinical data is collected in the coming years. Unfortunately, much of the capabilities discussed have yet to be realized in a practical commercial form at the time of this document’s publication. However, progression towards advanced WSNs have been building for decades, and have been accelerating as more companies push to deliver useful products based upon the latest in sensing technology.