Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Jul 5, 2022
Date Accepted: Oct 14, 2022
Smart helmet with multimodal sensing for health and safety: A scoping review
ABSTRACT
Background:
As a form of the Internet of Things (IoT) gateways, a smart helmet is one of the core devices in IoT that offers distinct functionalities. The development of smart helmets connected to IoT infrastructure helps promote connected health, safety, and efficiency in various fields. In this manner, we present a comprehensive analysis of smart helmet technology and its main characteristics and applications for health and safety.
Objective:
This paper reviews the trends in smart helmet technology and provides an overview of the current and future potential deployments of such technology, the development of smart helmets for continuous monitoring of the physiology and health status of users as well as the surrounding environmental conditions. The research questions were as follows; What are the main purposes and domains of smart helmets for health and safety? How have researchers realized key features and with what types of sensors?
Methods:
We selected studies cited in Google Scholar, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and EBSCO on smart helmets through a keyword search from January 2010 to December 2021 search period. Papers identified were N = 1,268 (Web of science n = 87, EBSCO n = 149, ScienceDirect n = 248, and Google Scholar n = 784), and the number of final studies included after PRISMA study selection was 57. We also performed a self-assessment on the reviewed articles to provide the quality of the paper. The scoring was based on five criteria; test environment, prototype quality, feasibility test, sensor calibration, and versatility of the smart helmet.
Results:
Smart helmet research has been considered in industry, sports, first responder, and health tracking scenarios for health and safety purposes. Among 57 studies, most studies with prototype development were industrial applications (18/57), and the two most frequent studies including simulation were industry (23/57) and sports (23/57) applications. From our assessment scoring result, studies tended to focus on sensor calibration results (2.3/3.0), while the lowest part was a feasibility test (1.6/3.0). Further classification of the purpose of smart helmets yields four major categories, including activity, physiological and environmental (hazard) risk sensing, as well as risk event alerting.
Conclusions:
A summary of existing smart helmet systems is presented with a review of the sensor features used in the prototyping demonstrations. Overall, we aimed to explore new possibilities by examining the latest research, sensor technologies, and application platform perspectives for smart helmets as promising wearable devices. The barriers to users, challenges in the development of smart helmets, and future opportunities for health and safety applications are also discussed. In conclusion, this article presents the current status of smart helmet technology, main issues, and prospects for future smart helmet designers and developers with the objective of making the smart helmet concept a reality.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.