Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) is a low-cost, evidence-based intervention with proven benefits to both infants and their families. It refers to holding the infant with the infant's chest skin against the caregiver's chest skin in an upright positionc[2]. Based on a report from the World Health Organizationc[3], KMC benefits are evidenced by a 32% reduction in neonatal mortality. It has been adopted as a standard of care for infants with low birth weights worldwide, especially in resource-constrained environments. Continuous monitoring of KMC practices is clinically important. In particular, the duration of KMC sessions and infant vital signs during KMC hold significant clinical values.
Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC), involving chest-to-chest skin contact between an infant and caregiver, is proven to be an effective intervention for preterm and full-term infants. Accurate monitoring of KMC duration and infant's vital signs during KMC is clinically important. Existing monitoring methods, however, rely on manual efforts and require rigid sensors or wires/electrodes on the infant's body. We propose Joey, a fabric-based approach to continuously monitor KMC duration and two vital signs essential to an infant's well-being: heart rate and respiration rate. Joey is a soft fabric necklace worn by the caregiver. It leverages the transmission of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals across individuals during skin-to-skin contact. With a minimalist fabric sensor structure, Joey measures KMC duration via the presence of mixed ECG signals. It then isolates the infant's ECG from this mixture with a proposed signal extraction algorithm and employs a diffusion-based denoising model to mitigate motion artifacts, enabling reliable inference of infant's vital signs. We fabricate Joey prototypes with off-the-shelf hardware and evaluate its performance with user studies. Results demonstrate that Joey achieves an average F1 score of 96% for KMC duration measurement, and clinically-acceptable accuracy in infant's vital sign estimation with a mean absolute error of 2.3 beats per minute and 2.9 breaths per minute in estimating heart rate and respiration rate. Clinical interviews further confirm the usability of Joey's sensing fabric for infant skin. A demonstration video of Joey is available at: mobilex.cs.columbia.edu/joey
In this demo we showcase an interactive application to support the learning of "TikTok dance challenge" short dance choreographies. Our system utilizes dance challenge videos as the information source, performing music analysis and pose estimation to segment the dance into learnable chunks and generate a practice plan that implements motor learning techniques such as incremental part-learning and fading guidance. These plans are presented in a web app that implements video demonstration, augmented webcam mirroring, practice recording/review functionality, and both concurrent and terminal feedback. By operating on a ubiquitous information source, generating the lessons automatically, and requiring only a web browser and webcam in the user interface, our system is a step towards significantly expanding the reach of dance choreography learning and a platform for further research into dance HCI.
Developing physical motion skills is an essential and empowering aspect of the human experience, and dance learning in particular has been shown to be widely useful with benefits ranging from promoting socioemotional learning in children [3] to increasing motivation and curiosity in college students [2] and improving quality of life for patients with Parkinson's disease [5]. Yet human dance instructors are expensive and electronically available guided dance instruction often requires a subscription. Many dances are shared on video-first social media sites such as TikTok and now Instagram, however a limitation to expanding access to dance instruction is the human effort that must be put into creating high quality dance tutorials.
We present a demo showcasing the capabilities of an infrared (IR)-based light communication system with a movable receiver. The system employs IR laser (VCSEL) together with scattering lens as the transmitter and an avalanche photo-diode (APD) with collimator as the receiver, using the reflection cross section existing in the environment (ceilings, walls, etc.) to spread the coverage of the communication system. The demonstration involves transmitting messages encoded as binary data through modulated IR light signals to the movable receiver. The receiver captures the signals using the APD, which are then decoded to retrieve the original message. The demonstration aims to showcase the robustness of the system against various sources of interference and the flexibility of the movable receiver to capture signals from different angles and positions. We believe that our demonstration will be useful for showcasing the potential of IR-based light communication in various applications (e.g., wireless VR/AR and high speed reliable data link) over more traditional communication methods that have limitations such as privacy and bandwidth.
Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC), involving chest-to-chest skin contact between an infant and caregiver, is proven to be an effective intervention for preterm and full-term infants. Accurate monitoring of KMC duration and infant's vital signs during KMC is clinically important. Existing monitoring methods, however, rely on manual efforts and require rigid sensors or wires/electrodes on the infant's body. We propose Joey, a fabric-based approach to continuously monitor KMC duration and two vital signs essential to an infant's well-being: heart rate and respiration rate. Joey is a soft fabric necklace worn by the caregiver. It leverages the transmission of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals across individuals during skin-to-skin contact. With a minimalist fabric sensor structure, Joey measures KMC duration via the presence of mixed ECG signals. It then isolates the infant's ECG from this mixture with a proposed signal extraction algorithm and employs a diffusion-based denoising model to mitigate motion artifacts, enabling reliable inference of the infant's vital signs. We demonstrate Joey's sensing capability with hand-shaking experiments, showing the real-time mixed ECGs. A demonstration video of Joey for actual KMC practice is available at: mobilex.cs.columbia.edu/joey
Conventional wisdom holds that laser-based systems cannot handle mobility due to the strong directionality of laser light. We challenge this belief by presenting Lasertag, a generic system framework that tightly integrates laser steering with optical tracking to maintain laser connectivity with high-velocity targets. Lasertag creates a constantly connected, laser-based tether between the Lasertag core unit and a remote target, irrespective of the target's movement. Key elements of Lasertag include (1) a novel optical design that superimposes the optical paths of a steerable laser beam and an image sensor, (2) a lightweight optical tracking mechanism for passive retroreflective markers, (3) an automated mapping method to translate scene points to laser steering commands, and (4) a predictive steering algorithm that overcomes limited image sensor frame rates and laser steering delays to quadruple the steering rate up to 151 Hz. We demonstrate Lasertag's tethering capabilty with various mobile targets, such as a VR headset worn during active game play, a remotely-controlled moving robot, and more. Lasertag paves the way for laser applications in highly mobile settings.
Advances in autonomous robotic networks have allowed for many applications in communication, exploration, and monitoring. However, a major limitation in developing truly autonomous systems with robots is its operation time, often bottlenecked by the mismatch between battery capacity and power demands for motion. This challenge is especially challenging for miniature or microrobots given the limited payload they can shoulder. To combat these shortcomings, we demonstrate an integrated laser power delivery system that tracks and steers ground robots that will be capable of delivering a sufficient amount of power that could support motion, communication, and sensing. Our results independently demonstrate sufficient power delivery from the optical circuit and promising tracking error with our event camera tracking pipeline. However, the integrated system reveals future challenges in realizing a fully integrated power delivery system.
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