CPOD - A Black Box For People

Developed for astronauts, a small device called "the CPOD" does for people what black boxes do for airplanes.

When planes have a problem, analysts can usually figure out what went wrong. They simply check the plane's "black box," which records exactly what was happening to the plane at the time.

Now, there's something similar for people. Under the leadership of Stanford University professor Greg Kovacs and engineers Carsten Mundt (NASA/Ames) and Kevin Montgomery (Stanford), researchers have developed a device that is like a black box or flight recorder for human beings.

Just as a plane's black box records crucial mechanical data, the CPOD (pronounced "see-pod"), keeps track of biological data, like changes in heart rate, the amount of oxygen in the blood stream, how the wearer is moving ... and much more.

The CPOD, first envisioned by John Hines of NASA's Astrobionics Technology Program, was intended to make it easier to monitor the vital signs of astronauts in space. Right now, such a process involves hooking the astronauts up "with a whole bunch of wires to a huge rack of equipment." In some cases, says Mundt, the data are recorded on paper and entered into a laptop by hand.

The CPOD changes all that.

It's a compact, portable, wearable device - a single piece of equipment that gathers a wide variety of vital signs. About the size of a computer mouse, a CPOD is worn around the waist. It's comfortable enough to be worn while sleeping. It's non-invasive.

more Basic features of the CPOD

It takes only minutes to don. Importantly, it can track a person's physiologic functioning as they go about their normal routine - they don't have to be tethered to some stationary device. It can store data for eight-hour periods for later downloading; alternatively, it can send it wirelessly, in real time, to some other device.

"This is a new tool," says Kovacs. "It allows monitoring of the body without invasion of the body - without tethering the person down, letting them go about their normal business."

Such data would, of course, be invaluable to researchers trying to understand how the human body adapts to extreme conditions - like space, the moon, or Mars. The ability to monitor astronauts so closely, as they work, and in real time, would also make the astronauts much safer.

For one thing, the CPOD could notice problems before the astronauts even became aware of them. "We have alarms set in our device," says Mundt. "If the heart rate goes, let's say, above 170, the CPOD would beep, and then the astronaut would know it's time to take it easy."

And, in the case of an emergency, the CPOD could provide vital signs within seconds - and it could quickly stream that information back to doctors on Earth.

The CPOD typically tracks heart performance, blood pressure, respiration, temperature, and blood oxygen levels. Using three tiny accelerometers, it also tracks a person's movements - it can tell whether they're running, for example, or spinning or tumbling.