CMU Portugal Program’s ERI VR2Market – The Wearable Life Monitor
The Portuguese team of the Entrepreneurial Research Initiative VR2Market: Towards a Mobile Wearable Health Surveillance Monitoring Product for First Response and other Hazardous Professions, hosted by INESC TEC in Porto, presented their research prototype, a vest and a mobile monitor that tracks the wearers vital signs and the safety of their surroundings. This technology is intended for the monitoring of the well-being of first response teams, to guarantee their safety and allow for better strategic management.
The VR2Market intends to join two aspects of monitoring: the shirt has sensors that record the wearers’ body temperature variations and heart rate; the hip-placed box will monitor the temperature, humidity or presence of harmful gases in the immediate vicinity. The prototype has already undergone testing at Carnegie Mellon University’s Silicon Valley campus, the Portuguese municipal police force, Polícia de Segurança Pública, in Porto, the Albergaria-a-Velha fire-fighters and the NAV Portugal air traffic controllers.
The specialized technology publication, Exame Informática, interviewed the VR2Market Principal Investigator and Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto faculty, João Paulo Cunha, and the researchers Joana Paiva and Susana Rodrigues. The resulting three-page spread was published in the weekly print version.
Read the Portuguese article at Exame Informática (June 1, 2017)
