Main Project Website: captivate.media.mit.edu
Summary: Smart eyeglasses have become ubiquitous in the tech world, from wearable
displays to
heart monitors. They also have become popular in the research community because they are an
ideal place on the human body for continuous monitoring of environmental and physiological
signals. Unfortunately, many smart eyeglasses are not designed with aesthetics first, often
leading to bulky designs that most people would not want to wear. This limits a researcher’s
ability to conduct naturalistic, long-duration studies. Further, available smart eyeglasses do
not allow researchers to connect their own devices (e.g. sensors) to the platform for data
exfiltration and signal processing. Instead, researchers must create their own custom sets of
glasses—a large time investment for an artifact that may only last the duration of the
experiment. Our platform addresses these concerns while also being directed to studying a user’s
cognitive
state, specifically cognitive loading and overall attention.
Our proposed eyeglass platform is made with the following constraints:
- be easy to program via an external connector
- have a built-in radio to allow for bidirectional communication
- include a standard suite of sensors that can be toggled depending on the application
- battery-powered and have included internal charging circuitry
- allow for easy expandability
- conform to an aesthetics-first design methodology
We have spent part of summer 2019 in Shenzhen, China, working with eyeglasses, injection
molding, and electrical circuit board manufacturers on the initial design of our system. Our
goal while in China was to learn the manufacturing limitations on various processes in order to
push the aesthetics of the system so that the design appeals to users while still giving
researchers all the capabilities they might need. Two key application
areas that we would like to initially start applying this platform to are online education
systems (e.g. Coursera) and concert performances.