Wearable, Assistive system for monitoring people in critical environments

Abstract

People often operate in critical environments determined by disaster events as earthquakes, floods, or fires. The surveillance of the persons represents a difficult task for the rescue teams, while any information about the people in danger could be vital for the people life. A wearable device, that is incorporated in the clothes, was conceived and implemented as experimental model. This device is based on capacitive sensors that are able to detect the movements of the human body parts and to determine a so-called Global Activity Index, in order to inform about the physical status of the supervised person. It was suggested that the persons activating in a critical environment are wearing some special clothes incorporating a wearable device that acquires data from the capacitive sensors, these sensors being painted directly on the textile and giving information about the position of the human body related to the clothes. We describe in this chapter such a wearable system.