VitalSign
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Murata's fatigue sensor demoed, coming soon to mobiles and handhelds near you
Need further confirmation that an IV drip of 5-Hour Energy is what your body really needs? Look no further than Murata's newfangled fatigue sensor. Demonstrated at CEATEC in front of thousands of jetlagged Americans, Europeans, Easter Islanders and Samoans, this compact device is built by "integrating a photoplethysmographic sensor, which measures a pulse and a blood oxygen saturation level, and electrodes that measure electrocardiogram (ECG)." We're told that the unit measures a fatigue degree (reported on a 1 to 100 scale) based on the "pulse, blood oxygen saturation level and electrocardiogram measured by the sensing parts," and while we're guessing the prototype will have to shrink significantly before it happens, the company seems focused on cramming this thing into cellphones and portable game consoles of the future.You know -- so Nintendo actually can know when you need to lay down the gaming and step outside for a bit.
Motorola gets into biometrics, touch control with new patents
What do you do as a handset maker when your design team can't get past one product design? You turn to new and strange patents and hope nobody notices your flagging product line, of course. Motorola has decided that monitoring vital signs via a Bluetooth headset and watch-like device combo and a new iteration of its S9 headset is where it's at. The headset -- and watch? -- will apparently gather data like heart rate, body temperature, and such, zap it to your headset and on to a server for further processing. The S9 seems to be mostly unchanged save for some touch control panels for adjusting volume, answering calls, and wandering through your tunes. Not sure if we'll ever see the first of these in any real world application, but we expect the new MOTOACTV S9 headset will appear at some point.
