Self-Driving Vehicles Paving the Way for Wearable Sensor Technology

PAVING THE WAY FOR WEARABLE SENSOR TECHNOLOGY

KAUST PHD GRADUATE

“KAUST provides students with all the expertise, facilities and connections they need to build, evolve and innovate beyond their academic backgrounds to lead worldwide change and impact.”

Joanna Nassar, Stanford University, 2017 KAUST PhD

KAUST researchers develop first-ever fully flexible silicon technology

Researchers at KAUST have developed a pioneering miniature sensor device that can be tagged to fish for marine ecosystem data gathering. The tagging technology sticks to the fish and can measure water temperature, pressure, depth and pH levels in parts of the ocean where humans cannot reach. The system, which weighs just 2.4 grams, can be attached to the shells or skin of marine creatures and is able to continuously transmit ecological data from ocean depths of up to 2 km for an entire year.

The technology, known as Bluefin, was developed by KAUST Professor of Electrical Engineering Muhammad Mustafa Hussain and 2017 KAUST PhD graduate Joanna Nassar. Dr. Nassar’s degree was in Electrical Engineering and she is now a post-doc in Biological Sciences at Stanford University. Bluefin will be available for use by scuba divers, naval forces and other stakeholders interested in marine life tagging for ecological data. “The sensors monitor the environment, save data in an integrated memory, and when the tag is brought to the surface, it can wirelessly transmit the data to nearby smartphones, tablets or computers,” Hussain explained in an interview with Arab News. The technology has been tested on marine species including blue crabs, turtles, stingrays, beluga whales, sharks and blue fin tuna.

As a non-invasive and biocompatible system, Bluefin is the first tagging technology that does not restrict the animal’s movements or cause it harm. Moreover, Hussain’s lab is the only academic research group in the world that has paved the way for a manufacturable hydrogenous integration strategy for high-performance, flexible and stretchable electronics. His overarching research seeks to introduce new applications for web-integrated, interactive electronics. Hussain’s research field, known as transformational electronics, is an emerging area of electronic applications, and the concept of flexible and stretchable electronics promises to have wide-ranging uses in the wearable sensor technology sector. Wearable sensors greatly expand the application of the internet of things (IoT)

In January 2020 Bluefin won the “Tech for a Better World” category at the highly competitive CES Innovation Awards in Las Vegas – an equivalent to the Nobel Prize in Consumer Electronics Technology. KAUST was the only academic research lab to receive recognition at the awards.

MUHAMMAD MUSTAFA HUSSAIN Professor of Electrical Engineering

WE ARE PROVIDING MARINE SCIENTISTS AROUND THE WORLD WITH THE TOOL TO ENABLE SAFE, LOW-COST AND WIDESPREAD IN-SITU STUDY OF OCEAN HEALTH TO SUPPORT CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT OF MARINE ECOSYSTEMS, WHICH IS OTHERWISE NOT POSSIBLE WITH CURRENT STATE-OF-THE-ART MARINE TAGS.