Vancouver-based Mio Global has announced it is pulling back from selling hardware. A pioneer in the wearable tech space, the company will focus on developing software instead.
Mio activity trackers distinguish themselves from the competition by boasting wrist heart rate monitors the company says are as accurate as chest straps. In addition to its fitness tracker range, its highly accurate sensors can be found onboard some third-party GPS running watches.
… Apple, Technogym and Fitness First have teamed up — a sort of Justice League of health — to devise a simple solution to this first-world problem, aimed at giving you maximum accuracy from your exercise data. Here’s how it works:
You go into a Fitness First gym, you find a Technogym cardio machine that pairs with an Apple Watch, you tap your Apple Watch to the machine, and you start your workout.
Matrix Industries’ has came up with a smart watch which runs on body generated heat. It uses high tech methods that make use of thermoelectric generators that yield better result than regular electric generators. These generators have a thermal design to convert the available heat into a wearable form-factor, while producing power to charge electronics and internal battery.
The world’s most valuable company crammed a lot into the tablespoon-sized volume of an Apple Watch. There’s GPS, a heart-rate sensor, cellular connectivity, and computing resources that not long ago would have filled a desk-dwelling beige box. The wonder gadget doesn’t have a sphygmomanometer for measuring blood pressure or polysomnographic equipment found in a sleep lab—but thanks to machine learning, it might be able to help with their work.
Research presented at the American Heart Association meeting in Anaheim Monday claims that, when paired with the right machine-learning algorithms, the Apple Watch’s heart-rate sensor and step counter can make a fair prediction of whether a person has high blood pressure or sleep apnea, in which breathing stops and starts repeatedly through the night. Both are common—and commonly undiagnosed—conditions associated with life-threatening problems, including stroke and heart attack.
Oticon HearingFitness™, the first hearing aid app dedicated to hearing fitness, won a CES Innovation Award in the Software and Mobile Apps category.
Just like an exercise tracker, HearingFitness monitors the wearer’s “hearing fitness”—the impact of hearing on their overall health—and provides advice and encouragement that helps the wearer hear better and stay healthy. With hearing loss ranking as the third most common chronic health issue in the U.S., one affecting more than 48 million Americans, closer attention to hearing health can reduce the risk of other ailments, including dementia.
… The new Bose “Sleepbuds” have been significantly redesigned since the Hush days, but the promise of the underlying tech remains unchanged: block sleep disturbing sounds like snoring, barking dogs, amorous neighbors, and road traffic through isolating eartips and soothing sounds tuned to mask the noise. The Sleepbuds come with a case good for one full recharge and additional tips to find the right fit. Oh, and don’t worry, it’ll work with an alarm that you set in the Bose Sleep app.
Devices like smartphones, smartwatches, and fitness trackers enable runners to control music, query fitness parameters such as heart rate and speed, or be guided by coaching apps. But while these devices are portable, interacting with them during running is difficult: they usually have small buttons or touchscreens which force the user to slow down to interact with them properly. On-body tapping is an interaction technique that allows users to trigger actions by tapping at different body locations eyes-free. This paper investigates on-body tapping as a potential input technique for runners. We conducted a user study to evaluate where and how accurately runners can tap on their body. We motion-captured participants while tapping locations on their body and running on a treadmill at different speeds. Results show that a uniform layout of five targets per arm and two targets on the abdomen achieved 96% accuracy rate. We present a set of design implications to inform the design of on-body interfaces for runners.
Every 40 days, a million people join Strava. It’s a staggering number for a niche social network aimed at athletes–but then again, Strava came along at the right time. The company, which was founded in 2009, has grown up alongside a groundswell of new cyclists and walkers in communities around the U.S. By some counts, commuting by bike has grown by more than 60% over the past decade, with walkers also increasing by leaps and bounds. While Strava’s core users tend to be athletes, it actively courts commuters as well: About half of the activities recorded through its app are commutes, rather than workouts.
Four years ago, the company launched a visualization tool meant to engage its users. It was a heat map–a mapping interface of route data that let you explore the frequency of routes taken around the world.
Strava was surprised to find that it wasn’t just users who were interested in the heat map: It was cities and states. “[We] had a lot of transportation departments reaching out to us, saying, ‘Hey, we could actually use a deeper dive into the same data, so we can better lobby for new infrastructure. We need to prove behavior change after new infrastructure is built, and we really need to drill down to [rider] counts, and temporal detail of time of day and day of week,” remembers Strava’s Brian Devaney.
Biometric-based person recognition methods have been extensively explored for various applications, such as access control, surveillance, and forensics. Biometric verification involves any means by which a person can be uniquely identified through biological traits such as facial features, fingerprints, hand geometry, and gait, which is a person’s manner of walking.
Gait is a practical trait for video-based surveillance and forensics because it can be captured at a distance on video. In fact, gait recognition has been already used in practical cases in criminal investigations. However, gait recognition is susceptible to intra-subject variations, such as view angle, clothing, walking speed, shoes, and carrying status. Such hindering factors have prompted many researchers to explore new approaches with regard to these variations.
Research harnessing the capabilities of deep learning frameworks to improve gait recognition methods has been geared to convolutional neural network (CNN) frameworks, which take into account computer vision, pattern recognition, and biometrics. A convolutional signal means combining any two of these signals to form a third that provides more information.
Privately held MEMS sensor vendor mCube announced the acquisition of 3D motion tracking technology company Xsens from ON Semiconductor for about $26 million.
Combining the two companies will enable mCube to create new markets for motion sensing and tracking solution, especially in the medical devices and sports science motion tracking, said Ben Lee, mCube’s CEO, in an interview with EE Times.
Researchers at MIT and several other institutions have developed a method for making photonic devices — similar to electronic devices but based on light rather than electricity — that can bend and stretch without damage. The devices could find uses in cables to connect computing devices, or in diagnostic and monitoring systems that could be attached to the skin or implanted in the body, flexing easily with the natural tissue.
The findings, which involve the use of a specialized kind of glass called chalcogenide, are described in two papers by MIT Associate Professor Juejun Hu and more than a dozen others at MIT, the University of Central Florida, and universities in China and France. The paper is slated for publication soon in Light: Science and Applications.
The world’s best surfers are headed inland in 2018, with an artificial wave being added to the World Surf League’s Championship Tour.
The Surf Ranch Facility, developed by legend of the sport Kelly Slater, is said to create consistent and predictable waves at the man-made facility in the middle of California.
The addition of the stop in Lemoore is being hailed as a win for surfers, administrators and fans.
“We’re only scratching the surface of how this technology can be applied and it is completely game-changing for the sport,” Sophie Goldschmidt, WSL CEO, said.
The ability of graphene to add functionality to common objects has been exploited in a new product on the market: footwear with better thermal properties. Developed by Graphene Flagship partners Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy, in collaboration with FADEL, a leading Italian shoe company based in Tuscany, the new GET® technology, patented by FADEL, gives the footwear better thermoregulation and freshness.
In this innovative shoe, when flakes consisting of several graphene layers are added to polyurethane, (the material of which the soles of FADEL shoes are made), laboratory tests show an augmented heat dispersion, a greater waterproofness and enhanced antibacterial properties. Combining these effects with a ventilation system developed for this particular type of shoe saw a better user experience. This prototype shoe was presented at the International Footwear Exhibition in Milan.
This crucial layer keeps your core insulated by trapping precious body heat. Plus, the right down jacket simply makes winter endeavors more enjoyable. Throw it on at camp after a day of backpacking, during a snack break on your ski tour, or when you’re strolling around the local dog park.
We’ve compiled a list of our favorite down jackets for an array of uses. To choose the following jackets, we looked at a variety of features on each, then compared a breakdown of features to weight to cost. That’s the technical side. We also examined how each jacket is performing in the industry, whether it’s best suited for the intended use, and feedback from real users.
Stanford researchers have developed a reversible fabric that, without expending effort or energy, keeps skin a comfortable temperature whatever the weather.
A new textile made from a reversible fabric could warm or cool wearers and keep them comfortable. Two layers of material with different abilities to release heat energy are stacked together and sandwiched between layers of polyethylene. (Image credit: Yi Cui Group)
In a paper published Nov. 10 in Science Advances, a team led by Yi Cui, professor of materials science and engineering, created a double-sided fabric based on the same material as everyday kitchen wrap. Their fabric can either warm or cool the wearer, depending which side faces out.
This project came out of Cui’s interest in energy efficiency and his expertise in manipulating nanoscale materials. He thought if people could be more comfortable in a range of temperatures, they could save energy on air conditioning and central heating.
… Sore, achy muscles sounds like something you’d want to avoid, but there’s a lot of controversy among gym-goers whether DOMS is actual a badge of honor. In fact, many guys believe they didn’t get a good enough workout in if they’re not super sore the next day.
So what’s the deal with DOMS? We talked to a few experts to decipher what’s behind your post-workout soreness, and what it really means for your gains. Here’s what we found out.