Wearable individual adapting cooling system using smartphone and heart beat sensor

In Japan, comfortable lifestyle and environment realized by abundant electric power broke down after March 11 2011. This has been accompanied by augmentation of heatstroke or hypothermia risks, as well as deterioration of labor productivity. An energy-saving method has been proposed that consist in direct neck cooling or warming to avoid decline of both task productivity and comfort. However, current neck cooling system is stand-alone type, so user cannot perceive running state and control state. In addition, temperature control algorithm using discomfort index do not consider individual sensation differences. To wear the system comfortably in daily life, this study proposes enabling system's running state visualization, monitoring, and control by connecting it to user's smartphone. A smartphone application to monitor system's running state has been developed, and an auto-control method to estimate human comfort sensation in real time using small heart-rate sensor has been proposed and validated.