Body Sensing Smartwatches to Enable Adaptive Lighting Systems

This project proposes to build a body sensing system that can measure individual mood states (e.g. happiness, anger, fear) and interactions between people. The goal of this project is to develop a lightweight, inexpensive, and non-intrusive sensor system that is easy to use over extended time periods. The team plans to integrate the smartwatch with each subject’s smartphone to access the phone’s location sensing and data transmission capacity, as well as its processing power. The smartwatches will also provide data on lighting level and heart rate. Smartwatches are designed to be worn constantly, naturally and non-intrusively, and their rechargeable batteries have robust charge length. Their displays also enable easy two-way communication to give status updates to wearers. The long-term vision of this research is that smartwatches can become a key element of an adaptive lighting systems that will adjust based on people’s moods and the kind of tasks a work group is tackling.