Baby Vital Signs

December 3, 2008

Radar can catch you for speeding and one day it might save your baby if he or she stops breathing. University of Florida engineers have developed a new system that uses radar technology to assess a person’s vital signs from a few feet away.

Reyes: “What it does is emit a radio wave at 5.8 GHz and we use that system to detect, through the motion of the chest wall. So we’re able to detect heart beat and respiration that way.”

Gabriel Reyes is part of the team that’s developing the sensor. You might find it on a crib one day, tracking a baby’s heart rate and breathing. For now, the sensor has a limit of about six feet.

Reyes: “What we wanted to do is take a different approach and use the radar technology we’re developing here at the lab to take it to the next level. To really be able to know whether the baby stops moving. Our sensor will be able to detect that.”

Engineers have also put the system on a robot; a system rescue crews could use one day to search for disaster survivors, through their vital signs.

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