EgoActive: Integrated wireless wearable sensors for capturing infant egocentric auditory-visual statistics and autonomic nervous system function ‘in the wild’

TY - JOUR

T1 - EgoActive: Integrated wireless wearable sensors for capturing infant egocentric auditory-visual statistics and autonomic nervous system function ‘in the wild’

AU - Geangu, Elena

AU - Smith, William Alfred Peter

AU - Mason, Harry Thomas

AU - Priscilla Martinez-Cedillo, Astrid

AU - Hunter, David

AU - Knight, Marina Iuliana

AU - Liang, Haipeng

AU - Garcia De Soria Bazan, Maria Del Carmen

AU - Ho Tse, Zion Tsz

AU - Rowland, Thomas

AU - Corpuz, Dom

AU - Hunter, Josh

AU - Singh, Nishant

AU - Vuong, Quoc

AU - Abdelgayed, Mona Ragab Sayed

AU - Mullineaux, David Ross

AU - Smith, Stephen Leslie

AU - Muller, Bruce

N1 - © 2023 by the authors

PY - 2023/9/16

Y1 - 2023/9/16

N2 - There have been sustained efforts toward using naturalistic methods in developmental science to measure infant behaviors in the real world from an egocentric perspective because statistical regularities in the environment can shape and be shaped by the developing infant. However, there is no user-friendly and unobtrusive technology to densely and reliably sample life in the wild. To address this gap, we present the design, implementation and validation of the EgoActive platform, which addresses limitations of existing wearable technologies for developmental research. EgoActive records the active infants’ egocentric perspective of the world via a miniature wireless head-mounted camera concurrently with their physiological responses to this input via a lightweight, wireless ECG/acceleration sensor. We also provide software tools to facilitate data analyses. Our validation studies showed that the cameras and body sensors performed well. Families also reported that the platform was comfortable, easy to use and operate, and did not interfere with daily activities. The synchronized multi-modal data from the EgoActive platform can help tease apart complex processes that are important for child development to further our understanding of areas ranging from executive function to emotion processing and social learning.

AB - There have been sustained efforts toward using naturalistic methods in developmental science to measure infant behaviors in the real world from an egocentric perspective because statistical regularities in the environment can shape and be shaped by the developing infant. However, there is no user-friendly and unobtrusive technology to densely and reliably sample life in the wild. To address this gap, we present the design, implementation and validation of the EgoActive platform, which addresses limitations of existing wearable technologies for developmental research. EgoActive records the active infants’ egocentric perspective of the world via a miniature wireless head-mounted camera concurrently with their physiological responses to this input via a lightweight, wireless ECG/acceleration sensor. We also provide software tools to facilitate data analyses. Our validation studies showed that the cameras and body sensors performed well. Families also reported that the platform was comfortable, easy to use and operate, and did not interfere with daily activities. The synchronized multi-modal data from the EgoActive platform can help tease apart complex processes that are important for child development to further our understanding of areas ranging from executive function to emotion processing and social learning.

KW - infant

KW - multimodal measures

KW - child

KW - wearable sensors

KW - egocentric view

KW - head-mounted camera

KW - ECG

KW - body movement

KW - naturalistic research methods

KW - real-world big data

U2 - 10.3390/s23187930

DO - 10.3390/s23187930

M3 - Article

SN - 1424-8220

VL - 23

JO - Sensors

JF - Sensors

IS - 18

M1 - 7930

ER -