Hugo Silva

Your Body as an Interface

Physiological data has had a transforming role on multiple aspects of society, which goes beyond the health sciences domains to which they were traditionally associated with. While biomedical engineering is a classical discipline where the topic is amply covered, today physiological data is a matter of interest for students, researchers and hobbyists in areas ranging from performing arts, music, human-computer interaction, among others. Regardless of the context, in the past the use physiological in experimental activities and practical projects was heavily bounded by the cost and limited access to adequate support materials. Specialised DiY platforms have been revolutionising biomedical education and prototyping, by providing versatile toolkits composed of low-cost hardware and software, and created to enable anyone to create cool projects and applications involving physiological data.

In this talk we will review how physiological signals are finding their way into a diversity of human-computer interaction applications, describing some of the supporting tools and use cases that have already made their way to prime time.