Patent Application
20160374588
Electronic devices may be configured to track and output information regarding physiological characteristics of a person, such as health and fitness data. Such information may be determined based, for example, upon biometric sensor data acquired by the computing device as the person performs various activities.
Examples are disclosed herein that are related to monitoring body hydration levels based on galvanic skin response measurements acquired by a wearable electronic device. One example provides a wearable electronic device comprising a sensor configured to measure a galvanic skin response, a logic device, and a storage device. The storage device comprises instructions executable by the logic device to operate a hydration monitoring mode, acquire a plurality of measures of galvanic skin response over time, and present data regarding the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response.
This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that solve any or all disadvantages noted in any part of this disclosure.
As mentioned above, electronic devices may monitor physiological characteristics via sensor data and provide feedback related to a person's health and fitness. For example, some wearable electronic devices may be configured to acquire and track various health and biometric data, including but not limited to heart rate, respiration rate, skin/body temperature, and calorie intake and expenditure, via sensor inputs.
Sensors on a wearable electronic device also may be used to detect electrical characteristics of skin. As such, examples are disclosed herein that relate to monitoring changes in body hydration levels via galvanic skin response sensor (GSR) data acquired via a GSR sensor on a wearable electronic device, and providing feedback regarding hydration levels.
Monitoring of and/or providing feedback related to hydration may be used in many scenarios. As one example, reminders or alerts to hydrate may be provided based upon hydration data acquired via a GSR sensor. As another example, a user may desire to continuously monitor and display hydration data while performing an activity, such as during exercise. As described below, different monitoring modes may be used for different activities, e.g. to provide power savings during when a physical activity level of a user is low while providing more granular data during periods of higher activity.
The wearable electronic device 10 includes various functional components integrated into flexion regions 14. In particular, the wearable electronic device 10 includes a compute system 18, display 20, loudspeaker 22, communication suite 24, and various sensors. These components draw power from one or more energy-storage cells 26. A battery—e.g., a lithium ion battery—is one type of energy-storage cell suitable for this purpose. Examples of alternative energy-storage cells include super- and ultra-capacitors. In devices worn on the user's wrist, the energy-storage cells may be curved to fit the wrist, as shown in the drawings.
The energy-storage cells 26 may be replaceable and/or rechargeable. In some examples, recharge power may be provided through a universal serial bus (USB) port 30, which includes a magnetic latch to releasably secure a complementary USB connector. In other examples, the energy storage cells 26 may be recharged by wireless inductive or ambient-light charging. In still other examples, the wearable electronic device 10 may include electro-mechanical componentry to recharge the energy storage cells from the user's adventitious or purposeful body motion. For example, batteries or capacitors may be charged via an electromechanical generator integrated into the wearable electronic device 10. The generator may be turned by a mechanical armature that turns while the user is moving and wearing the wearable electronic device 10.
In the wearable electronic device 10, the compute system 18 is situated below the display 20 and operatively coupled to the display 20, along with the loudspeaker 22, the communication suite 24, and the various sensors and other components not depicted (e.g. haptic outputs, such as piezoelectric vibrators). The compute system 18 includes a data-storage machine 27 to hold data and instructions, and a logic machine 28 to execute the instructions. Aspects of the compute system 18 are described in further detail with reference to
The display 20 may be any suitable type of display. In some configurations, a thin, low-power light emitting diode (LED) array or a liquid-crystal display (LCD) array may be used. An LCD array may be backlit in some implementations. In other implementations, a reflective LCD array, e.g., a liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) array, may be frontlit via ambient light. A curved display may also be used. Further, active-matrix organic LED (AMOLED) displays or quantum dot displays may be used.
The communication suite 24 may include any appropriate wired or wireless communications componentry. In
In the wearable electronic device 10, touch-screen sensor 32 is coupled to display 20 and configured to receive touch input from the user. The touch-screen sensor 32 may be resistive, capacitive, or optically based. Pushbutton sensors may be used to detect the state of push buttons 34, which may include rockers. Input from the pushbutton sensors may be used to enact a home-key or on-off feature, control audio volume, turn the microphone on or off, etc.
The wearable electronic device 10 may also include motion sensing componentry, such as an accelerometer 48, gyroscope 50, and magnetometer 51. The accelerometer 48 and gyroscope 50 may furnish inertial and/or rotation rate data along three orthogonal axes as well as rotational data about the three axes, for a combined six degrees of freedom. This sensory data can be used to provide a pedometer/calorie-counting function, for example. Data from the accelerometer 48 and gyroscope 50 may be combined with geomagnetic data from the magnetometer 51 to further define the inertial and rotational data in terms of geographic orientation. The wearable electronic device 10 may also include a global positioning system (GPS) receiver 52 for determining the wearer's geographic location and/or velocity. In some configurations, the antenna of the GPS receiver 52 may be relatively flexible and extend into flexion regions 12.
The compute system 18, via the sensory functions described herein, is configured to acquire various forms of information about the wearer of the wearable electronic device 10. Such information must be acquired and used with utmost respect for the wearer's privacy. Accordingly, the sensory functions may be enacted subject to opt-in participation of the wearer. In implementations where personal data is collected on the wearable electronic device 10 and transmitted to a remote system for processing, that data may be anonymized In other examples, personal data may be confined to the wearable electronic device 10, and only non-personal, summary data is transmitted to the remote system.
As mentioned above, GSR data acquired by the contact sensor modules 44a and 44b may be used to determine hydration characteristics of the user. GSR may be defined as a change in one or more electrical properties of the skin, including but not limited to skin conductance, resistance, impedance, potential, admittance, and any suitable combinations thereof. GSR may behave as a function of sweat gland activity, due to the conductive properties of sweat. For example, more sweating may result in higher skin conductance (lower resistance/impedance), while relatively less sweating may result in lower skin conductance (higher resistance/impedance).
GSR data may be used to provide information on a user's possible hydration state in any suitable manner For example, GSR data may be used to track information indicative of possible changes in hydration state. In such examples, a baseline hydration level may first be set by the wearable electronic device 10 or by user input, and outputs may be provided based upon changes to this baseline hydration level as estimated using GSR data. In some examples, a baseline hydration level may be assumed to be a hydration level corresponding to a well-hydrated state. The setting of the baseline hydration level may be performed by user input, e.g. after consuming water or other hydrating fluids and at rest, or may automatically be set based upon a time of day at which a user is likely to be well-hydrated (e.g. at a time likely to be after a meal). In other examples, the monitoring of hydration may be initialized in any other suitable manner.
After the baseline hydration level is determined, GSR data may be monitored over time to estimate changes in the hydration level. For example, when the GSR output indicates a greater level of sweat, the estimated hydration level may be reduced at a relatively faster rate than when the GSR sensor indicates a lesser level of sweat.
When it is determined that a threshold level of hydration has been lost, the wearable electronic device 10 may output information alerting the user to this possible condition. Such information may be output in any suitable manner For example, information on the estimated hydration levels may be provided on an ongoing basis on a graphical user interface. In such examples, hydration levels may be output as a qualitative assessment of hydration level based on changes to the baseline. Such a qualitative output may include descriptive terms (e.g., “well-hydrated,” “dehydrated,” “high,” “low”), graphical representations (e.g., line graphs tracking hydration over time, bar or pie charts representing a comparison of estimated current hydration level to charts), and/or any other suitable visual output. The wearable electronic device 10 also may present alerts based upon estimated hydration state. Such alerts may include visual alerts, such as display of instructions or notifications (e.g., “drink more water”, color codes related to possible hydration states), as well as auditory outputs, haptic outputs, etc.
Instead of or in addition to tracking an estimated amount of hydration lost due to activity, warnings or alerts may be provided based upon threshold levels of GSR sensor outputs, possibly in combination with other sensor data. For example, a high detected skin temperature combined with GSR data that shows little sweat on the skin may trigger the output of an alert to cool down and/or hydrate.
The tracking of an estimated hydration level may be adjusted when a user rehydrates. The occurrence of rehydration may be determined in any suitable manner, including but not limited to user inputs. For example, when a user turns off a hydration alert, a user interface may allow the user to indicate that rehydration has occurred, and potentially how much fluid was consumed. In other examples, a pre-determined quantity of fluid may be assumed to have been consumed when an alert is cancelled.
In some examples, the wearable electronic device 10 may have different hydration state monitoring modes that are triggered under different conditions. This may help to preserve computing resources when hydration states are likely to change slowly, while providing more granular data when hydration states are likely to change more quickly. The different modes may utilize different sensor data sampling rates, different analyses, and/or different outputs. For example, GSR data may be sampled at a higher sampling frequency in an activity mode, a lower frequency in a rest mode, and at an even lower frequency when in an idle/off mode. It will be understood that different hydration monitoring modes may utilize any suitable different operative states of the GSR sensor and/or other device components.
Any suitable trigger or triggers may be used to change hydration monitoring modes. For example, a user may make a user input to change the hydration monitoring mode from a rest mode to an activity mode before exercising, and then change back to rest mode once exercise is complete. Alternatively, such a trigger may be optional, as a hydration monitoring mode may be automatically entered whenever the wearable electronic device 10 is on.
The wearable electronic device 10 also may use sensor data to automatically trigger changes in operating modes. As an example, the GSR sensor may determine that the wearable electronic device 10 is removed from the wrist based upon various sensor data, including but not limited to data indicating an open circuit condition for the contact sensor modules 44a and 44b, and change from an active monitoring state to an idle/off state. Likewise, a change from an idle/off state to an active monitoring state may be triggered by detecting GSR data that exceeds a threshold noise level, indicating that the GSR contact modules are in contact with skin.
Further, different activity modes may be triggered based upon contextual sensor data indicating that a particular activity is being performed. Examples of such activities include, but are not limited to, rest, walking, jogging, running, biking, and swimming. Data from motion sensors (e.g. inertial measurement unit data, image sensor data), location sensors (e.g. GPS data), and other suitable data may be used to detect and distinguish such activities, as each activity may be distinguishable by such data. Thus, individual activities may have modes with different sensor sample rates and different associated analyses/outputs.
Contextual sensor data also may be used to disambiguate potentially ambiguous GSR data. As an example, where the wearable electronic device 10 detects a change in GSR indicating that the user's sweat output is decreasing, skin temperature data may be used to determine whether the GSR data is indicative of dehydration or of reduced exertion. Where a user's skin temperature increases beyond a threshold while the user's sweat output decreases, an alert may be output to remind the user to hydrate, whereas such a notice may not be output where the user's skin temperature decreases along with detected sweat output.
Different outputs and alerts may be provided in different operating modes. For example, referring to
In contrast, in the examples of
In the example of
The determination of the start of a user activity triggers an active hydration monitoring mode, as shown at 306. In this mode, the wearable electronic device 10 may sample GSR data at a second, higher sampling frequency than the first sampling frequency, as shown at 308. In other instances, a determined user activity may cause the wearable electronic device 10 to sample GSR data at a lower sampling frequency, or maintain the sampling frequency, depending on the determined activities and potentially on other contextual data. In other examples, the wearable electronic device 10 may also consider remaining battery power, environmental sensor data, or any other suitable contextual information.
After a period of increasing GSR signal magnitude, the GSR signal then decreases for a period. Such a drop in GSR measurements may be a result of the user stopping exercising and cooling down, or may be a result of the user becoming progressively dehydrated as the user continues the exercise. Thus, at 310, the wearable electronic device may determine if the user is still exercising based on other sensor data, e.g. motion data and GPS data. If the wearable electronic device 10 determines that the user is still exercising, the wearable electronic device 10 may maintain the higher GSR data sampling frequency. Further, if it is determined that the user is becoming dehydrated, the wearable electronic device 10 may output a low hydration alert, as shown at 314. If the wearable electronic device 10 determines that the user is no longer exercising, the wearable electronic device 10 may return to measuring GSR at the lower sampling frequency in a rest mode. The wearable electronic device 10 may also present a workout summary, as shown at 318. Such a workout summary may include any suitable data regarding tracked hydration characteristics throughout the period of exercise.
Method 400 further includes, at 414, outputting data regarding the plurality of measures of GSR. The output may represent any suitable information determined from the GSR measurements, including hydration characteristics, as shown at 416. Information relating to hydration characteristics may include, but is not limited to, estimated body hydration level, estimated skin hydration level, estimated sweat loss, and estimated states of hydration (e.g. dehydration) based upon such estimates. Further, the GSR and hydration data may be presented in relation to other sensor data, as shown at 418. Other sensor data may include biometric data, such as heart rate, respiratory rate, and skin temperature, as well as motion sensor data (e.g. inertial motion sensor data, image sensor data) and data from other sensors that capture information related to the user. Other sensor data also may include environmental sensor data, such as ambient temperature and location.
The wearable electronic device also may output an alert, as indicated at 420. Such alerts may take any suitable form, including but not limited to visual, auditory, and/or haptic alerts. The alert may be configured to communicate any suitable information, such as notifications of different levels of dehydration and/or recommendations for the user to rehydrate.
Further, the data output at 414 may be output as a function of time to illustrate a time dependency, as shown at 422. The time-dependent data may represent, for example, tracked hydration data during a particular activity (e.g. a workout summary), hydration data compared or averaged across many occurrences of an activity (e.g. hydration levels during sleep for the past week), and/or any other suitable time-dependent information. It will be understood that any other useful feedback and output may be presented to the user regarding hydration characteristics based on GSR data.
In some embodiments, the methods and processes described herein may be tied to a computing system of one or more computing devices. In particular, such methods and processes may be implemented as a computer-application program or service, an application-programming interface (API), a library, and/or other computer-program product.
The logic machine 504 includes one or more physical devices configured to execute instructions. The logic machine 504 may be configured to execute instructions that are part of one or more applications, services, programs, routines, libraries, objects, components, data structures, or other logical constructs. Such instructions may be implemented to perform a task, implement a data type, transform the state of one or more components, achieve a technical effect, or otherwise arrive at a desired result.
The logic machine 504 may include one or more processors configured to execute software instructions. Additionally or alternatively, the logic machine 504 may include one or more hardware or firmware logic machines configured to execute hardware or firmware instructions. Processors of the logic machine 504 may be single-core or multi-core, and the instructions executed thereon may be configured for sequential, parallel, and/or distributed processing. Individual components of the logic machine 504 optionally may be distributed among two or more separate devices, which may be remotely located and/or configured for coordinated processing. Aspects of the logic machine 504 may be virtualized and executed by remotely accessible, networked computing devices in a cloud-computing configuration.
The data-storage machine 506 includes one or more physical devices configured to hold instructions executable by the logic machine 504 to implement the methods and processes described herein. When such methods and processes are implemented, the state of the data-storage machine 506 may be transformed—e.g., to hold different data. The data-storage machine 506 may include removable and/or built-in devices. The data-storage machine 506 may include optical memory (e.g., CD, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray Disc, etc.), semiconductor memory (e.g., RAM, EPROM, EEPROM, etc.), and/or magnetic memory (e.g., hard-disk drive, floppy-disk drive, tape drive, MRAM, etc.), among others. The data-storage machine 506 may include volatile, nonvolatile, dynamic, static, read/write, read-only, random-access, sequential-access, location-addressable, file-addressable, and/or content-addressable devices.
It will be appreciated that data-storage machine 506 includes one or more physical devices. However, aspects of the instructions described herein alternatively may be propagated by a communication medium (e.g., an electromagnetic signal, an optical signal, etc.) that is not held by a physical device for a finite duration.
Aspects of the logic machine 504 and the data-storage machine 506 may be integrated together into one or more hardware-logic components. Such hardware-logic components may include field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), program- and application-specific integrated circuits (PASIC/ASICs), program- and application-specific standard products (PSSP/ASSPs), system-on-a-chip (SOC), and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), for example.
The term “program” may be used to describe an aspect of the compute system 502 implemented to perform a particular function. In some cases, a program may be instantiated via the logic machine 504 executing instructions held by the data-storage machine 506. It will be understood that different programs may be instantiated from the same application, service, code block, object, library, routine, API, function, etc. Likewise, the same program may be instantiated by different applications, services, code blocks, objects, routines, APIs, functions, etc. The term “program” may encompass individual or groups of executable files, data files, libraries, drivers, scripts, database records, etc.
It will be appreciated that a “service”, as used herein, is an application program executable across multiple user sessions. A service may be available to one or more system components, programs, and/or other services. In some implementations, a service may run on one or more server-computing devices.
The display subsystem 508 may be used to present a visual representation of data held by the data-storage machine 506. This visual representation may take the form of a graphical user interface (GUI). As the herein described methods and processes change the data held by the storage machine, and thus transform the state of the storage machine, the state of the display subsystem 508 may likewise be transformed to visually represent changes in the underlying data. The display subsystem 508 may include one or more display subsystem devices utilizing virtually any type of technology. Such display subsystem devices may be combined with the logic machine 504 and/or the data-storage machine 506 in a shared enclosure, or such display subsystem devices may be peripheral display subsystem devices. Display 20 of
The input subsystem 510 may comprise or interface with one or more user-input devices such as a keyboard, mouse, touch screen, or game controller. In some embodiments, the input subsystem may comprise or interface with selected natural user input (NUI) componentry. Such componentry may be integrated or peripheral, and the transduction and/or processing of input actions may be handled on- or off-board. Example NUI componentry may include a microphone for speech and/or voice recognition; an infrared, color, stereoscopic, and/or depth camera for machine vision and/or gesture recognition; a head tracker, eye tracker, accelerometer, and/or gyroscope for motion detection and/or intent recognition; as well as electric-field sensing componentry for assessing brain activity. The touch-screen sensor 32 and push buttons 34 of
The communication subsystem 512 may be configured to communicatively couple the compute system 500 to one or more other computing devices. The communication subsystem 512 may include wired and/or wireless communication devices compatible with one or more different communication protocols. As non-limiting examples, the communication subsystem 512 may be configured for communication via a wireless telephone network, a local- or wide-area network, and/or the Internet. The communication suite 24 of
The sensor suite 514 may include one or more different sensors—e.g., a touch-screen sensor, push-button sensor, microphone, visible-light sensor, ultraviolet sensor, ambient-temperature sensor, contact sensors such as GSR sensor and skin temperature sensor, and/or GPS receiver—as described above with reference to
The GSR sensor 518 may receive raw signals from the conductance sensor 522, and may further process the raw signals to determine a hydration characteristic (e.g. sweat activity level, body hydration level). Control signals sent to the current source 520 and the conductance sensor 522 may be based on signals received from the conductance sensor 522, signals derived from the sensor suite 514, information stored in the data-storage machine 506, input received from the input subsystem 510, input received from the communication subsystem 512, etc.
Another example provides a wearable electronic device, comprising a sensor configured to measure a galvanic skin response, a logic device, and a storage device comprising instructions executable by the logic device to operate a hydration monitoring mode, acquire a plurality of measures of galvanic skin response over time, and present data regarding the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response. The instructions may additionally or alternatively be executable to present data by presenting data regarding a hydration characteristic based on the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response. The instructions may additionally or alternatively be executable to acquire other biometric data and present data regarding the galvanic skin response in relation to the other biometric data. The instructions may additionally or alternatively be executable to detect a trigger to enter the hydration monitoring mode, wherein the trigger comprises a user input. The instructions may additionally or alternatively be executable to detect a trigger to enter the hydration monitoring mode, wherein the trigger comprises a user activity as determined via sensor data. The instructions may additionally or alternatively be executable to detect a trigger to enter the hydration monitoring mode, wherein the trigger comprises a sensor input exceeding a threshold noise level. The instructions may additionally or alternatively be executable to present data by presenting an alert upon detecting a low body hydration level based on the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response. The instructions may additionally or alternatively be executable to acquire the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response at a sampling frequency based on a determined user activity.
Another example provides a wearable electronic device, comprising a sensor configured to measure a galvanic skin response, a logic device, and a storage device comprising instructions executable by the logic device to detect a trigger to begin a hydration monitoring mode, acquire a plurality of measures of galvanic skin response over time, determine a hydration characteristic based on the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response, and present data regarding the hydration characteristic. The instructions may additionally or alternatively be executable to present data regarding the hydration characteristic based on the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response. In this example, the trigger may additionally or alternatively include a user input, a user activity as determined via sensor data, and a sensor input exceeding a threshold noise level. The instructions may additionally or alternatively be executable to present data by presenting an alert upon detecting a low body hydration level based on the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response. The instructions may additionally or alternatively be executable to acquire the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response at a sampling frequency based on a determined user activity.
Another example provides, on a computing device comprising a sensor, a method, comprising detecting a trigger to begin a hydration monitoring mode, acquiring a plurality of measures of galvanic skin response over time, and outputting data regarding the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response. The method may additionally or alternatively include presenting data regarding a hydration characteristic based on the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response. The method may additionally or alternatively include acquiring the plurality of measures of galvanic skin response at a sampling frequency based on a determined user activity. Detecting the trigger may additionally or alternatively include detecting one or more of a user input and a sensor input exceeding a threshold noise. Detecting the trigger may additionally or alternatively include determining a user activity via sensor data.
It will be understood that the configurations and/or approaches described herein are exemplary in nature, and that these specific embodiments or examples are not to be considered in a limiting sense, because numerous variations are possible. The specific routines or methods described herein may represent one or more of any number of processing strategies. As such, various acts illustrated and/or described may be performed in the sequence illustrated and/or described, in other sequences, in parallel, or omitted. Likewise, the order of the above-described processes may be changed.
The subject matter of the present disclosure includes all novel and nonobvious combinations and subcombinations of the various processes, systems and configurations, and other features, functions, acts, and/or properties disclosed herein, as well as any and all equivalents thereof.
