Sunday 11 June 2017

First week as a GSoCer

Since the amazing birthday present I received last month, life as a GSoC-er has been amazing. Selected under Italian Mars Society (IMS), a sub org. under Python Software Foundation, my task for the summer is to aid missions to mars by working on a Biometric Signal Sensor's Interface.
This project is part of the current studies on the simulation of Astronaut’s Health Monitor Systems.

 When astronauts travels to Mars, or even other planets, they will be exposed to a number of hazards e.g. radiation, microbes in the spacecraft, planetary surface toxic dust. This project mainly revolves around configuring biometric signal sensors.

 The project has an initial phase of surveying the commercial sensors available, and selecting one, or many, after extensive research. The sensors are selected such that they read the biometrics like Heart Rate, Accelerometer data, Respiration rate, body temperature, Pulsioximetry data,Respiratory Volume, ECG, etc.

After the survey, it was found that Hexoskin - a wearable body metrics smart shirt fit the bill.
As their website says, it measures heart rate, HRV, breathing rate, cadence, steps, ECG, sleep positions and a lot more.

The hexoskin smart shirt is used as the device that the astronauts will primarily wear and using which their health will be monitored.

The astronaut wears the smart shirt, plugs in the hexoskin device to the shirt, sync his/her android/iOS mobile (with the hexoskin app installed) and starts exploring Mars. The application on the phone, collects the data in real-time from the shirt and sends it to their server.
This is the data we exploit to monitor the astronaut and detect any sort of anomalies that occur.
The data accessed in real-time from the shirt is sent to a Anomaly Detector - another project under IMS taken up by a friend and a fellow GSoCer - to detect various kind of anomalies, Atrial Fibrillations for starters.

The initial weeks as a GSoCer - after acquiring the device - was quite exciting, especially in the Community Bonding period. Interaction with mentors, fellow GSoC-ers and everyone else in the community has been great.

With a couple of merged pull requests, initial work around getting the data from the smart shirt has been going well.

It's time to speed up development with the first evaluations coming around in a couple of weeks.

As said before, the summer's going to be interesting!

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