Demo Abstract: FreePulse Heart Rate Monitoring System Using Ambient Structural Vibrations

Heart rate is a critical metric for human cardiovascular health. Most common methods for measuring human heart rate involve wearable devices (e.g., electrocardiography, smart watches). However, such devices can cause discomfort to some patients, especially the elderly or young children. This paper presents FreePulse, a heart rate monitoring system for seated subjects using ambient vibrations. FreePulse builds on our past work using vibrations in the building structures around us to measure human activities and health. As people’s hearts beat, they push on the surfaces the body is touching, creating vibrations in those structures. We combine structure response characterization with human pulse modelling to identify these pulse-induced vibrations from ambient vibration. In testing, FreePulse has shown up to 96% pulse rate accuracy on average, competitive with consumer-grade wearable devices.