Naqaab: towards health sensing and persuasion via masks

Abstract

Given the pandemic and the high air pollution in large parts of the world, masks have become ubiquitous. In this poster, we present our vision and work-in-progress (WIP) towards leveraging the ubiquity of masks for health sensing and persuasion. We envision masks to monitor health-related parameters such as i) temperature; ii) lung activity, among others. We also envision that retrofitting masks with sensors and display to show localized pollution can create awareness about air pollution. In this WIP, we present a smart mask, Naqaab1, that measures forced vital capacity (FVC) of the lung using a retrofitted microphone. We evaluated the measured lung parameter on eight persons using an Incentive Spirometer2 and found that our smart mask accurately measures incentive lung capacity. Naqaab also measures pollution exposure and indicates via different LED colours. We envision using such a system for eco feedback.