A Review of Robust Wearable Sensor Systems for Monitoring in Extreme Environments

Polar expeditions are increasingly used as a training modality for military personnel, astronauts, and other individuals who are required to live and work in extreme environments. These individuals are susceptible to injury, illness, and considerable psychological, physical, and cognitive stress. Wearable sensor systems have been used to monitor for these adverse effects, but few are designed to be robust to the unique challenges associated with long duration use in the polar environment. This work presents a literature review on wearable sensor systems evaluated in extreme environments, to better characterize what makes a system "robust". The results of the literature review indicate that a robust wearable sensor system does not yet exist for polar expeditions, as previous systems are obtrusive, unreliable, and/or have not been validated. Furthermore, this research area is sparse; more testing is needed in the polar environment, or analogous extreme environments, to identify unforeseen challenges that cannot be predicted in the lab. The contribution of this work is two-fold: first, specifying that a wearable sensor system must be unobtrusive, reliable, and validated in order to be robust. Second, identifying specific design choices that make a system robust or have led to failures in the past.