ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the main features of biomedical smart systems and introduces their enabling technologies and modes of operation. It illustrates how environmental information can be used in a smart way to develop an activity recognition system and explains considerations on development tools. The concept of smart systems covers low-cost, miniaturized sensing devices to high-end modern diagnosis equipment. For healthcare, this includes smart lenses measuring glucose levels and body temperature sensors to three-dimensional medical devices and wireless Electroencephalography systems. A major feature of smart systems is to use the computational power of the central processing unit to implement an intelligent closed control loop. In the critical context of medical applications, such control systems must be highly robust, requiring high level of accuracy and stability. Enabling intelligent behavior of smart systems relies on the computational power, the energy efficiency, and the memory available on the device. Prototyping smart systems have been largely facilitated by the availability of modular development platforms.
