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Decoding Vibration Energy for User Context in Power Harvesting Wearable Devices

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Decoding Vibration Energy for User Context in Power Harvesting Wearable Devices

  • LecturerProf. Mahbub Hassan (University of New South Wales)
    Host: Ling-Jyh Chen
  • Time2016-09-27 (Tue.) 14:00 ~ 15:30
  • LocationAuditorium 106 at IIS new Building
Abstract

We are witnessing an explosive growth of a new breed of personal mobile devices --- smart wearables. These smart devices, often worn as a fitness band or a smartwatch, have a small form factor with limited functionalities, hence can operate with only a few milliwatts. The low power consumption makes these devices a target for exploiting recent advancements in power harvesting. Power harvesting wearables that convert vibrations from human motion into electricity producing hundreds of microwatts have already started to emerge. With continuous improvement in power harvesting efficiency, we can expect to see more wearable products powered by vibration energy, alleviating the battery-charging bottleneck for these devices.

While the mainstream research duly focuses on improving the power harvesting efficiency, I will introduce a new research direction that treats the vibration energy as a novel source of information for detecting a wide range of user contexts.  This research is motivated by the significant power savings that could be achieved by not having to sample conventional sensors for context recognition. Methods and experimental results will be presented that demonstrate feasibility of piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters for recognizing daily activities, counting steps, estimating calorie expenditure, distinguishing spoken words, and detecting transportation modes of the user. I will also explain a simulation method that can be readily used for this research. Finally, I will discuss future research directions and share preliminary results from a recent experiment where vibration energy was successfully decoded for data communication between two devices.

BIO

Mahbub Hassan is a Full Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, the University of New South Wales, Sydney and a  Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE (COMSOC) for 2013-2016.  He worked as Visiting Professor at Osaka University, Japan, University of Nantes,  France, and National ICT Australia (NICTA). He has co-authored three books, which are used in universities across North America, Europe, and Asia. He is currently an Editor of IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial and has previously served as Editor for IEEE Network, IEEE Communications Magazine, and Computer Communications. Professor Hassan has completed PhD from Monash University, Australia, MSc from University of Victoria, Canada, and BSc from Middle East Technical University, Turkey. More information about Professor Hassan is available from http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~mahbub.