Harnessing Infant and Toddler Wearable Systems to Promote Development and Health

Dear Colleagues,

Infancy and toddlerhood are critical periods in children’s lives, characterized by rapid developmental changes with long-lasting impacts throughout the lifespan. Continuous and objective monitoring of development during this period, as it unfolds in the complexity of the natural environment, is essential both for understanding how healthy physical and psychological development unfolds and for identifying early signs and progression of poor health or atypical development. Wearable systems offer a transformative opportunity for unobtrusive data collection in the real world, with the ability to reach to infants and toddlers worldwide across diverse cultural, geographical, and socio-economic environments. These systems can provide truly scalable means for understanding the complexity of development, as well as for the early detection and prevention of poor health.

However, research has often narrowly focused on the engineering challenges of device fabrication or isolated physiological monitoring. This Special Issue seeks to bridge the gap between novel hardware, robust real-world data science, and meaningful applications in developmental research and clinical practice.

We invite contributions that move beyond simple hardware proof of concept, focusing instead on any critical stage of the data lifecycle, from unobtrusive multimodal sensing (including physiology, movement, and interaction with the environment) to efficient, scientifically valid, and reliable data processing, analysis, and validation. We welcome work on individual, high-impact pipeline components, as well as fully integrated systems. Furthermore, we specifically encourage submissions that validate the generalizability and robustness of these wearables and data processing pipelines across diverse cultural and socio-economic settings, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

We strongly encourage submissions that present frameworks for monitoring both typical and atypical development, recognizing that understanding the trajectories of healthy development is foundational to the early detection of poor health and timely intervention.

This Special Issue welcomes original research articles and review papers on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

1. Novel Sensing Systems and Integration

• Design and validation of child-safe, unobtrusive, and comfortable wearable and near-body sensor systems optimized for scalable screening and early intervention in infants and toddlers.
• Multimodal sensing systems integrating physiological sensors (e.g., ECG, PPG, temperature), movement sensors (IMUs), and ecological context sensors (e.g., head-mounted cameras, microphones).
• Systems for monitoring traditionally difficult-to-measure parameters (e.g., feeding behaviors, sleep micro-architecture, parent–child interaction dynamics).
• Low-power systems and on-body/edge computing solutions for efficient and private data handling in infant and toddler wearables.

2. Advanced Data Processing and Analytics

• Novel signal processing methods for robust artifact detection and removal in noisy, ecological infant data.
• Data fusion algorithms for synergizing information from heterogeneous sensor streams (e.g., combining IMU, heart rate, and head-mounted camera data) to infer behavioral states.
• Scientifically valid and reliable methods for translating raw multimodal sensor signals into clinically and developmentally relevant validated measures.
• Studies on the trustworthiness, transparency, and accountability of data processing pipelines to ensure both scientific rigor and public confidence.
• Techniques for ensuring the generalizability, fairness, and interpretability of AI and machine learning models in pediatric health and developmental science.

3. Developmental Science and Health Applications

• Typical Development: Studies demonstrating scientifically robust methodology and broad data coverage using wearables for ecological assessment to precisely characterize the trajectories of typical motor and socio-cognitive development.
• Atypical Development: Integrated systems and models for the early detection, monitoring, and tracking of developmental variations or divergences from neurotypical developmental trajectories (e.g., related to ASD, cerebral palsy, or other neurodevelopmental conditions).
• Behavioral Phenotyping: Using multimodal data streams to quantify and classify complex infant/toddler behaviors (e.g., temperament, engagement, exploratory play, gaze patterns).
• Wearable-based methods for objectively assessing the efficacy of early interventions by tracking changes in developmental measures.
• Integrated studies mapping the complex relationships between physical health (e.g., sleep, cardiorespiratory stability) and developmental/psychological outcomes.

4. Usability, Ethics, and Validation

• Long-term ecological validation studies comparing wearable-derived developmental measures against gold-standard assessments, prioritizing data collected in the natural home environment over traditional short-term clinical or laboratory-based paradigms.
• Studies on parent/caregiver acceptance, usability, and integration of wearable systems into family life.
• Ethical frameworks, data privacy, and security considerations specifically tailored for vulnerable infant/toddler populations.

Dr. Elena Geangu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• wearable technology
• developmental science
• infant monitoring
• pediatric health
• ecological assessment
• multimodal sensing
• machine learning
• early intervention
• scalable screening
• prevention and intervention