Pulse-Glasses: An unobtrusive, wearable HR monitor with Internet-of-Things functionality

The concurrent popularity of wearable sensors and Internet-of-Things (IoT) brings significant benefits to body sensor networks (BSN) that could communicate with the cloud computing platforms for bringing interoperability in health and wellness monitoring. We designed Pulse-Glasses that are cloud-connected, wearable, smart eyeglasses for unobtrusive and continuous heart rate (HR) monitoring. We 3D-printed the first prototype of Pulse-Glasses that use a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor on one of the nose-pads to collect HR data. We integrated other circuits including an embedded board with Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and a rechargeable battery inside the two temples of Pulse-Glasses. We implemented IoT functionalities such that HR data are recorded from Pulse-Glasses, visualized on an Android smartphone, and stored seamlessly on the cloud. In this paper, we present the developments of Pulse-Glasses hardware including IoT services and the preliminary results from validation experiments. We compared Pulse-Glasses with a laboratory ECG system to cross-validate HR data collected during various activities-sitting, talking, and walking-performed by a participant. We used Pulse-Glasses to record HR data of a driver to test IoT functionalities of location services and BLE and cloud connectivity. The first set of results is promising and demonstrates the prospect of Pulse-Glasses in the field of cloud-connected BSN.