Wearable Internet of Things – FALL Semester
(Special Problems Course - ELE491 and ELE591)


[Funded and supported by VentureWell.]

This is a tutorial-driven, design-centered course. We have carefully crafted practical tutorials on Internet of things and wearable technologies that allow students to learn programming, coding,  circuit designs, and prototyping.

Course Impacts:
Cara Nunez, BME, Graduated in 2015, won the RI Business Plan Pitch Competition. She presented Always-in-Control, an eye-controlled robot.
David Cipoletta, ELE, Grad Student, ventured a startup company, Pison Technology that is based on his course project.
Andrew Peltier, Computer Science, Graduating in 2018, was selected as one of the finalists in the RI Business Plan Pitch Competition in 2016.






Course Credit: 3
(Important notes: students from all three majors need to choose 3 credits when they enroll for this course on eCampus.)

BME: Biomedical Engineering Technical Elective
CPE: Computer Engineering Professional Elective
ELE: Electrical Engineering Professional Elective
Engineering Entrepreneurship Minor: A listed course
[The course may require a simple petition application to count it as a professional elective course.]

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Instructor:                                      Dr. Kunal Mankodiya
Course Term                                 Fall 2017
ECampus Course No.                ELE491(0001) and ELE591(0001)
Class Time:                                   10:00am –10:50am (Mon-Wed-Fri)
Class Location:                            Washburn Hall  132 
Office Hours:                                1:00 – 2:00 pm, Mon & Fri, Kelly Annex - A215
Contact:                                         kunalm@uri.edu

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Course Description

SEE PREZI

By 2018, it is estimated that wearable device market will exceed 12.6 billion US dollars. Furthermore, there is a concurrent emergence of internet-of-things (IoT) technology that enables interplay between wearable devices, embedded/mobile computing systems, and cloud servers, giving rise to a new wave of technology known as “Wearable Internet of Things (Wearable IoT)”. These new technologies are expected to transform the way we live. The objective of Wearable IoT is to simplify the design of wearable devices and their connection with the internet to a point where individuals are enveloped by unobtrusive sensing elements to form intelligence for various time-critical, goal-oriented, human-in-the-loop applications––continuous health monitoring, remote healthcare management, mobility and behavior monitoring, sports, and assistive technologies for people with disabilities. Apart from these healthcare applications, students will gain benefits of computing and communication capabilities of Wearable IoT to enhance human-to-human and human-to-machine interactions. 


The key objective of this new course is to help students view Wearable IoT as a tool to conceive and create connected wearable devices. The course introduces architectural components of wearable IoT and their functions. The students will acquire the ability to develop algorithms that run on body-worn sensors to detect on-body/peripheral activities. The course will form an interdisciplinary teams consisting of undergraduate senior and graduate students from various engineering disciplines (biomedical, computer, electrical, chemical, and mechanical). Teams will use the learned concepts in the class to design a realizable project on connected wearable devices aimed to achieve a specific objective in the healthcare area. The teams will acquire knowledge of business aspects of their development. The course will have periodic lectures from successful entrepreneurs.

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Course Prerequisites
BME360/361 or ELE338/339 or ELE205/206 or permission of instructor

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Topics

TECHNICAL
  • Introduction to Internet of Things and Wearable Devices
  • Architectural components of Wearable Internet of Things
  • Wearable device design
  • Body sensor network (BSN)
  • Data sampling and communication strategies
  • Wearable Big Data Analytic Techniques
  • Battery management of wearable devices
  • Wearable IoT Applications
  • Body-worn Health Monitors
  • Connected Gateways as Data Aggregators
BUSINESS
Patent and Intellectual Property
Startups on Wearable Devices
Business Plan
Market Survey

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Textbooks
Although, there is no required textbook for this course, students are encouraged to read the following textbooks and journals. In addition, required reading materials will be posted on the course website.

Books:
•    “Wearable Embedded Computing for Multimodal Health Monitoring” by Kunal Mankodiya, 2012. ISBN: 978-3846530269

Journals:
•    IEEE Internet of Things Journal

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Course Objectives:

Students will acquire skills of:
- Designing wearable sensor for monitoring health, behaviors, locations, activities, environments, and so forth
- Developing algorithms that run on wearable sensors
- Creating strategies to prolong battery life of the wearable sensors
- Generating networking architecture for data transfer
- Processing the data for noise removal
- Analyzing the data to provide insights to end-users (patients, doctors, physiotherapists, sportsmen, drivers, firefighters, soldiers, astronauts, climbers, sky/ocean divers and many professionals who perform time-critical tasks.)

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Course Activities:

- Wearable Project IoT Projects
- Weekend Hack-A-Thon
- Demo Mini Fair
- Elevator Pitch Competition

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Course Policies

- Students must read the assigned material by the date the class covers the material.
- There will be an open-house event at the end of the semester. Student teams will demonstrate their working prototypes to visitors from academia, industries, non-profit organizations and K-12 students.
- Grading will be based on:

Attendance                         10%
Team Assignments          20%
Project Demo                    30%
Presentation                      20%
Report                                  20%
TOTAL                                  100%