Smart Wearable for Fatigue Tracking

Project Information

SWeaT

Grant agreement ID: 893544

DOI

10.3030/893544

Project closed

EC signature date 17 April 2020

Start date 15 July 2020

End date 14 July 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 183 473,28

EU contribution

€ 183 473,28

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA DI PISA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SWeaT (Smart Wearable for Fatigue Tracking)

Reporting period: 2020-07-15 to 2022-07-14

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The SWeaT project aims to develop a wearable technology for monitoring athletes hydration which, under the surveillance coaches and physicians, can effectively improve athletic performances without incurring in overtraining or even injuries. For this purpose the device provides analytical data from body sweat, naturally produced during physical effort.

Promising commercial exploitation, and thus, impact in every-day life of amateur and professional athletes, is envisioned. Personal information regarding inner body dynamics at molecular level empower athletes to their best possibilities while avoiding the need of expensive and time-consuming specialized analysis. Nevertheless, this promise holds true only if the sweat-sensing devices can be mass-produced. For all these reasons, SWeaT combines the up-scalable microchip technology together with additive manufacturing on flexible materials for best compliance to human body.

Combined, these technologies enable the sweat-sensing device to be lightweight and unobtrusive, easy to use, compatible with current fitness monitors while substantially retaining the accuracy and precision of a chemical laboratory run by specialized technicians.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

- Fabrication and lab-measurements of ion-selective sensors on flexible polymeric substrate, to provide information electrolytes loss in sweat in real time. This activity has been carried on in collaboration with the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (Spain).
- Design and test of a printed-circuit board prototype for sensor readout and their electrical characterization. Contextually, all the low-to-high level codes has been created to easily automate measurements extraction.
- Finite-element method simulations for the design optimization of the meso/micro- fluidics structures has been carried out.
- An application-specific integrated circuit has been fully designed in commercial 180nm CMOS technology available through Europractice mini@asic service. This will constitute the core component for the multi-channel digital readout of sensors. The custom design of such integrated circuits where subject of two degree thesis within the University of Pisa.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Next, the sensing components and electronics need to be integrated and interfaced to a Bluetooth-capable device to provide a fully functional device ready for field tests.
During the final phase of this project, voluntary participants affiliated to amateur or professional sport clubs will be involved for device validation.
Such prototype will constitute an important step forward more advanced societal challenges such as finding solutions for safety at work, pharmacology adherence, personal medicine for elder people.