This is a project I worked on with Kati London and Sai Sriskandarajah.
Inspired by the idea of observing personal space and stress in the urban environment, Urban Sonar is a wearable system that logs and visualizes proximity and heart rate over the course of a day.
Four Maxbotix Ultrasonic Range Finders are mounted in the front, back, and shoulders of a hooded sweatshirt, measuring the proximity of people and objects on all sides of the body.
Four conductive fabric leads, stemming from the Polar Heart Rate Monitor, are strapped around the fingers to measure pulse.
The rest of the electronic components are housed in a pocket inside the sweatshirt at the small of the back.
Sensor data is fed into the Arduino board which then interprets it and sends it serially to the BlueSMiRF device. The BlueSMiRF then sends the data via bluetooth to a Nokia N80 mobile phone where it is logged using Dan O’Sullivan’s Logger midlet.
Once the log is complete, it is uploaded to a server where it is interpreted in a time-based visualization made in Processing. (Hit the start button below to see visualization.)
