Preliminary Evaluation of a Wearable Sensor System for Assessment of Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, and Activity Level in Working Dogs

This paper reports the development of a wearable wireless canine harness for tracking heart rate, heart rate variability, and activity level in working dogs. This new design is based on 3D-printed conductive electrodes embedded into the structure of a chest strap instrumented with a wireless data acquisition system. We tested the functionality of this system on adult detection dogs for their wellness assessment. The preliminary in vivo results demonstrate the feasibility of this system to track performance and wellness of working dogs up to walking speeds of 5-10 km/h.