RAPID: Low-cost, Batteryless Smart Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Tackling the COVID-19 Pandemic

医护人员依靠口罩和其他个人防护设备（PPE）来保护他们的健康。COVID-19大流行表明，仅凭个人防护设备无法保护工人，因为疲劳、活动甚至与人接触都会影响工人的健康和能力。该项目的目标是开发智能PPE，其中包括设计可连接到口罩上的小型，低成本和智能无电池传感器设备。这些口罩将为工作人员提供有用的信息，帮助他们自我管理健康，而无需充电或维护，同时降低尺寸和成本，不引人注目地保护工作人员。研究任务的中心是构建一个能量收集和无电池的硬件和软件平台，即使动态能量输入导致间歇性电源故障，也能对口罩内的传感器数据进行持续推理和通知。三个研究任务是追求（1）原型的硬件平台间歇供电的人的感觉，（2）开发一个基于任务的自适应检查点系统的内存受限的间歇性系统，执行设备上的推理，（3）探索自适应机制的连续推理，调节估计的预测精度，以减少电源故障。最后，将研究产品集成到一个平台中，并为智能PPE开发传感应用。这项研究将为使用智能PPE在COVID-19大流行和未来健康危机中为医护人员提供低成本、主动保护的计算手段提供支持。通过留下电池，这些设备可以以较小的尺寸和成本运行，无需维护，无需充电。这些设备将为工人和医院提供可操作的数据和通知，以控制传染病的传播，并保持一支准备就绪、健康的劳动力队伍。该研究为超约束计算系统的设计提供了信息，并可用于保护其他重要工作人员和普通人群。开发的系统，包括软件，硬件，文档和详细的组装说明，将提供给社区。所有研究产品将在以下网站http://kamoamoa.com/projects/smart-ppe/上提供。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Healthcare workers rely on face masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) to safeguard their health. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that PPE alone cannot protect workers, because fatigue, activity, even exposure to people impact the health and ability of the worker. The goal of this project is to develop smart PPE, which includes the design of small, low cost, and smart batteryless sensor devices that can be attached to masks. The masks will provide useful information for workers to self-manage health without the need for recharging or maintenance at reduced size and cost, unobtrusively protecting the worker.The research tasks center on building an energy harvesting and battery-free hardware and software platform that conducts continuous inference and notification on in-mask sensor data despite intermittent power failures stemming from dynamic energy input. Three research tasks are pursued (1) prototyping a hardware platform for intermittently powered human sensing, (2) developing a task-based adaptive checkpointing system for memory-constrained intermittent systems that perform on-device inference, (3) exploring adaptive mechanisms for continuous inference which modulates estimated accuracy of prediction to reduce power failures. Finally, the research products are integrated into a single platform and sensing applications are developed for smart PPE.This research will enable the computational means for low cost, active protection of healthcare workers in the COVID-19 pandemic and future health crises using smart PPE. By leaving batteries behind, these devices can function maintenance-free, without recharging, at a reduced size and cost. These devices will provide actionable data and notifications to workers and hospitals for controlling the spread of infectious diseases and maintaining a ready, healthy workforce. The research informs ultra constrained computing system design and could be applied to protect other essential workers and the general population.The developed systems, including software, hardware, documentation, and detailed assembly instructions will be made available to the community. All research products will be made available at the following website http://kamoamoa.com/projects/smart-ppe/. The site will remain accessible for at least a year after the completion of the work.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.