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Date:  Thu, October 24, 2013
Time:  10 am
Location:  Holmes Hall 389
Speaker:  Bryson Padasdao, Advisor: Dr. Olga Boric-Lubecke

Continuous respiratory activity monitoring can help predict and identify respiratory failure, and could potentially be life-saving. Recent wearable, wireless technology allows users to monitor important physiological signals, such as heart and respiratory rate, with the advantages of comfort and portability. However continuous, remote, monitoring requires regular battery replacement, which poses an inconvenience for the user, and a barrier to compliance and wide adoption of this technology.  If respiratory energy is harvested, the energy can provide power for such a wearable biosensor, thus eliminating the need for regular battery replacement.  This work demonstrates the feasibility of the zero-net energy biosensor concept. Respiratory effort is harvested through electromagnetic generation, while concurrently sensing critical respiratory parameters. Methodology for extracting respiratory parameters from electromagnetic generator outputs is investigated. High sensing accuracy of both respiratory rate and tidal volume is initially demonstrated using a mechanical target simulating respiratory motion. Close agreement between electromagnetic sensor outputs and a gold standard for respiratory measurements is further demonstrated through human testing.