First International Symposium on Applied Sciences in Biomedical and Communication Technologies 1 f Abstract—Smart-Clothing is a project that combines research in textiles materials and wireless sensor and actuator networks in the context of human body monitoring with statistical methods for the data analysis and treatment. This project aims mainly to aid in the monitoring of the foetal movement in the last four weeks of pregnancy. Besides the integration of sensors in the garment there will be needed a hierarchical communication system that allows the delivery of the data collected from the garment that the pregnant is wearing to the doctor. The pregnant can be either at home or in the hospital. In the first stage of the project tests are being made using several types of sensors integrated in a belt in order to choose the one that is more reliable for the detection of foetal movement. Another sensing task is the manufacture of the electrodes for the electrocardiogram (ECG) system. At this point, the electrodes for the ECG are already made and working. The testing of the sensor for the detection of foetal movement is still being done. Index Terms—Smart Textiles, Hierarchical Wireless Communications, WSAN, Tele Medicine, Sports. I. INTRODUCTION he main objective of the Smart-Clothing (Smart Clothing for Health Monitoring and Sport Applications) project is to boost the regional economy in the area of knowledge and technological innovation by using materials for the smart textiles and embedded advanced communications systems. This project has a specific objective of covering the market of Manuscript received July 30, 2008. This work was supported by Unidade de Detecção Remota, Department of Physics, and by Unidade de Materias Têxteis e Papeleiros, both from University of Beira Interior, by Instituto de Telecomunicações, by COST 2100 (Pervasive Mobile & Ambient Wireless Communications), by the PhD FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) grant SFRH / BD / 38356 / 2007, and by the Smart-Clothing project, an iCentro project approved by CCDR-C with FEDER funding. Authors acknowledge the contributions from Doctor Miguel Castelo Branco. Luís M. Borges, Fernando J. Velez, and João Ferro are with the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Department of Electromechanical Engineering, University of Beira Interior, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal (phone: +351275329953; fax: +351275329972; e-mail: lborges@lx.it.pt, fjv@ubi.pt, ferro@lx.it.pt). Andreia Rente and Rita Salvado are with the Department of Textile Engineering, University of Beira Interior, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal. (e- mail: rente.andreia@gmail.com; rita.salvado@ubi.pt). António S. Lebres is with the Department of Physics, University of Beira Interior, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal. (e-mail: lebres@ubi.pt) J. Martinez Oliveira is with the Centro Hospitalar Cova da Beira, 6200- 251 Covilhã, Portugal. (e-mail: jmo@fcsaude.ubi.pt) Pedro Araújo is with the Department of Informatics, University of Beira Interior, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal. (e-mail: paraujo@di.ubi.pt) healthcare and sports. The development of Smart textiles prototype, such as the one proposed by the Project Smart- Clothing, combines investigation in functional textiles materials and wireless communications networks in the context of human body and statistical methods for the data analysis and treatment. A hierarchical communication system is employed to deliver the data from the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) that is installed in pregnant woman. Although the main focus of Smart-Clothing is to produce the sensors integrated into the clothes and to integrate them into the WBAN, broader Wireless Sensor and Actuator Network (WSAN) solutions are being envisaged. e.g., in the context of high competition teams, where the objective is to design and develop instrumentation to support clinical intervention for the rehabilitation of neuro-muscular and muscular-skeletal functions caused by traumatic injuries that occurred either during sports activity. As the biomechanical analysis of the human movement needs a use of complex hardware and software systems, there is an opportunity for wireless communications and instrumentation and measurement research to integrate these devices into tiny wireless sensor devices, with simplified network capabilities, that will enlarge amplitude and freedom of the movements. The remaining of the paper is organized as follows. Section II presents the overview of the project. Section III presents the description of the project. It includes the main areas of the project and the tasks overview for the Smart-Clothing project. Section IV presents preliminary results of of movement and ECG sensing. Finally, Section V presents the conclusions and suggestions for further work. II. SMART-CLOTHING This Smart-Clothing project is an iCentro project approved by CCDR-C with FEDER funding and will end on December of 2008. The methodological specifications applied in this project will allow for quantifying the precision of the experimental measurement with the new device for signal acquisition, develop algorithms to extract the parameters that show clinical relevance and to establish strategies for efficient data mining in the context of medical diagnostic of foetal health in the pregnant women, and real-time monitoring of sport activities. From the conventional sensors and electronic circuits for data acquisition and storage point of view, the objective is to Overview of Progress in Smart-Clothing Project for Health Monitoring and Sport Applications Luís M. Borges, Andreia Rente, Fernando J. Velez, Luisa R. Salvado, António S. Lebres, J. Martinez Oliveira, Pedro Araújo and João Ferro T Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE DA BEIRA INTERIOR. Downloaded on December 18, 2009 at 10:35 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.