Rapid Wearable Prototyping with Hybrid Architecture

This session demonstrates rapid development, prototyping and interfacing sensors into a wearable device, along with the design considerations for managing battery and performance in small form factor applications. We'll look at how to achieve sensor interface and processing needs while prototyping these designs using some low-cost, open-source, off-the-shelf hardware. We'll go from sensors, into MCUs, and all the way out to application processors running an OS. The session is targeted at product designers and developers who want to discover methods for rapidly developing and prototyping their wearable ideas, and alsi we target everyone who wants to take a glimpse of how wearable prototyping works for some inspiration.

We'll see one of the key innovation for enabling long-duration operation of wearables based on an Hybrid Design Architecture (HDA). HDA is fundamentally about the separation of hardware and software domains in a wearable design architecture to maximize the performance and battery life, while minimizing the complexity of integrating sensors and peripherals. This approach splits the hardware into two domains, one consisting of a ARM Cortex-M processor to handle sensors and peripherals, and another with an ARM Cortex-A running an operating system capable of handling the user interface, heavy processing, and communications. The MCU manages all the sensors, as a sensor hub, while the CPU is able not only to display information when needed, but also to host complex API interfaces towards third-party cloud frameworks.

We will cover:

• Overview of design considerations for wearables

• Approach to implementing HDA using Cortex M0+ and Cortex A9

• How to implement sensor interface on Cortex M0

• How to send data between the two processors, and when to do so to minimize power usage

• How to receive data from within OS

• Demo: wearable reference design with Android application

• Demo: wearable reference design with Yocto Linux and native Java app

• Demo: wearable reference design: Yocto Linux and Python application

Presenter: Nicola La Gloria

Nicola is the CEO of Kynetics, a software company based in Santa Clara, that develops products in the Device-to-Cloud market space. He is also the CTO of Goodees, a Santa Clara startup company that develops a marketplace for the sharing economy. He participated in the software development of one of the first Android smart watches and is the co-author of the first wearable reference computer board. Nicola has a Master’s degree in Astronomy and a Ph.D. in Space Sciences with a specialization in astronautics and autonomous navigation. His scientific interests vary from Estimation Theory, Stochastic Processes and Machine Learning. He has been assistant professor of Orbital Spacecraft dynamics at University of Padua.