WOMB is a system aimed at monitoring and allowing a safer environment for babies. Parents, specially first time parents go through an extremely stressful period during the first couple of years after birth. Our system is here so that parents can worry less and live a less stressful life by knowing that their baby is safe at all times. This system does this through the use of sensors to monitor some of the babies vitals as well as the main environmental variables that are important to consider in a new born's environment.
WOMB monitors your new born's heart rate, the humidity/temperature levels in the room and it also monitors whether or not your baby is crying.
Our app:
The system is controlled via an app to allow the parents to modify the parameters according to their baby's specific needs. For example even though the ideal temperature for a new born's room is 18 degrees Celsius, some babies do react differently and prefer a warmer room. These parameters can therefore all be adjusted on the app where they will also see some guidelines to help them through the calibrating process.
Our status pod:
The status of the baby and it's environment is relayed via our status pod which displays information via a color coded system. This was done with the intent of incorporating calm technology within the design. We didn't want our product to be so present in a room that it became the center of attention. We wanted it to be in the peripheral vision of the parents so that they could attend to the babies needs if something were to go wrong. The use of lights as an indicator of status allows for less clutter in the system, with the removal of numbers and complicated data. The parents just need to know if their baby is safe and they don't want to have to worry about numbers. This way the system processes the numbers and gives a user friendly indication of the current status.
The pod is very user friendly and should be widely understandable by the user with the use of symbols. If one of the 4 main sectors(Humidity, heart rate, sound, temperature) goes out of "normal" range the quadrant will light up red. For example if the temperature of the room were to go out of its range by 2 degrees the quadrant would go red indicating that the room temperature isn't within range and that you should attend to your child as he/she is at risk. As more and more quadrants are activated the inner ring changes color it goes from green "All Good" and fades to red. A tone is also available if the parents desire an audio cue to be alerted.
The inner ring will always glow green if all of the variables are within ranges this was designed in such a way that the parents can always have a confirmation that their loved one is safe.
Our whole system is connected and each device in the system speaks to each other constantly. As well as having the status displayed on the status pod, information can be streamed live on a smartphone via our WOMB app.
All of the sensors are incorporated within the smart mat, the heart rate is measured using a method called Ballistocardiography using MEMS sensor. This methode measures the vibrations of the heart to give an accurate measurement of heart rate.
