Designing a Smart Helmet for Wildland Firefighters to Avoid Dehydration by Monitoring Bio-signals

Smart Helmet is a new wearable device to monitor wildland firefighters’ real-time bio-signal data and alert potential health issues, i.e., dehydration. In this paper, we applied the human-centered design method to develop Smart Helmet for firefighters. We initially conducted multiple rounds of primary research to collect user needs and the deployment constraints by interviewing 80 firefighters. Targeted on dehydration caused by heat exhaustion and overexertion, we developed a smart helmet prototype, named FireWorks, with an array of sensors collecting the firefighter’s bio-signals, including body temperature, heart rate, and motions. When abnormal bio-signal levels are detected, the alert system will notify the firefighter and their supervisor. The notification is achieved by an on-device algorithm that predicts imminent health risks. Further, we designed a mobile application to display real-time and historical bio-signal data as well as alert users about potential dehydration issues. In the end, we ran user evaluation studies and iterated the prototype based on user feedback, and we ran the functional evaluation to make sure all the implemented functions work properly.