The $300 Welbi 'tricorder' that can wirelessly monitor the vital signs of anyone in the same room
- Welbi designed to let people monitor their elderly relatives remotely
- Uses low power radio waves to sense the heart rate of people in the room
- Can detect tiny changes in the body as they breathe in and out
- Comes with a special app to display the data, which can be shared with doctors
It seems like something out of a sci-fi film.
The Welbi is a small black box that monitor the vital signs of anyone in the same room as it.
It uses radio waves to remotely read heart rate and breathing, which is uploaded to a cloud server, allowing concerned relatives and doctors to monitor people remotely.
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The welbi uses radio waves to remotely read heart rate and breathing, which is uploaded to a cloud server, allowing concerned relatives and doctors to monitor people remotely.
It is designed to be used to monitor the health of the elderly, and there are currently 50 million seniors in the US.
The company behind the gadget, V-Sense, is a startup founded by former NASA engineers and project managers, and is using space agency technology that can measure vital signs from a distance, without any physical contact or wires attached to the target’s body.
The underlying technology was developed at JPL to identify victims of natural disasters by locating sources of heartbeats in rubble piles, and works in a similar way to speed cameras, bouncing low power radio waves back off the body allowing it to work out when a person breathes in and out.
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'Until now there's been no way to reliably keep track of their health,' said Founder Jeff Nosanov worked at NASA JPL for five years, leading advanced concept projects.
The Welbi uses lower power radio waves to monitor people.
The current working prototype can monitor heart rate, respiratory rate, and heart rate variability - but the firm hopes it will one day be able to do a lot more.
'In its current form the Welbi can analyse, record and distinguish respiration rates.
HOW THE WELBI WORKS
Relatives and doctors can use an app to check in on a person remotely using the system
The underlying technology was developed to identify victims of natural disasters by locating sources of heartbeats in rubble piles.
Developed by the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, Washington, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. it was named Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response, or FINDER.
FINDER was created to detect a human heartbeat buried beneath 30 feet (9 meters) of crushed material, hidden behind 20 feet (6 meters) of solid concrete, and from a distance of 100 feet (30 meters) in open space.
Now the system is being used in a home monitor.
Welbi is unique among vital sign monitors in that the person being monitored does not need to wear any kind of wearable, keep any lead or contact attached to their body, or change their behavior or routine in any way.
The Welbi unit sits unobtrusively in the room and continuously monitors the person’s heart rate, respiratory rate, and heart rate variability.
As the radio waves shine on someone’s body, they reflect back differently depending on how the body is expanding and contracting with each breath or heartbeat.
The monitor continuously scans the room with radar.
As the radio frequency signal shines on someone’s body, it reflects back differently depending on how the body is expanding and contracting with each breath or heartbeat.
Because the body expands much more for each breath than a heartbeat, it’s easy for the system to tell the data apart.
After the device collects 30 seconds of data, an algorithm processes it to deliver back a heart rate and respiratory rate, and that information is sent to the cloud.
At any time the person’s relatives can open the Welbi app on their smartphones and see at a glance how their loved one is doing.
The Welbi has been compared to the Star Trek Tricorder, a multi-function hand-held device to scan and analyze data. It's used to scout unfamiliar territories and examine living things. Pictured left is Star Trek's Spock holding a tricorder. Pictured right is Spock using a tricorder to help diagnose someone's state of health
'To improve this we must develop the software and cloud platform behind it.'
The company also hopes the technology could be used in hospitals, where it could eliminate the need for obstrusive, uncomfortable wires and cables attached to patients that can spread germs and get in the way of medical teams
Nosanov sayd the aim of the Welbi is to offer families a way to check in on their relatives easily.
'We want to offer families peace of mind, knowing that dad slept well.'
'As it uses low power radio, its completely safe and unobtrusive.'
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