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Passive Sensing

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Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine

Definition

Passive sensing is a data collection method that requires no or minimal interactions from humans. Examples of passive sensing are location tracking, physical activity recognition, conversation detection, etc.

Description

Passive sensing is a data collection method that requires no or minimal interactions from humans. A familiar example of passive sensing is location tracking, where a mobile app continuously tracks an individual’s location in the background. Passive sensing, however, is not limited to location tracking. Other forms of passive sensing include tracking steps, physical activity (Lu et al. 2010), sleep (Lane et al. 2011), heart rate (Hovsepian et al. 2015), electrodermal response (Sano and Rosalind 2011), nonverbal speech patterns (Rabbi et al. 2011), app usage (Gordon et al. 2019), etc. Typically, passive sensing is done via smartphones, wearables (e.g., smartwatches), or implantable devices in the environment (e.g., Amazon Echo), but custom-made devices can...

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References and Further Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Mashfiqui Rabbi

Authors
  1. Mashfiqui Rabbi
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Correspondence to Mashfiqui Rabbi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA

    Marc Gellman

Section Editor information

  1. Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Emily Lattie

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Rabbi, M. (2020). Passive Sensing. In: Gellman, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_102004-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_102004-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6439-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6439-6

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