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HALO collar promises to reduce concussions in contact sport
When it comes to high impact sports, sprains and strains are almost inevitable. The NFL has been equipping players with durable, shock-absorbent helmets for years to guard against traumatic injuries, but quick head movements often leave athletes susceptible to other kinds of damage like concussion. Enter HALO, a new form of wearable tech which could help to bridge that gap.
Distro Issue 107: How Edward Thorp gambled his way into wearable-tech history
Edward Thorp was banned from casinos in Vegas for counting cards. He even published a book on his system for winning at the blackjack table using the mathematical theory of probability. While working at MIT, he built what many consider the first wearable device for -- you guessed it -- beating roulette. In a fresh issue of our weekly, Donald Melanson profiles Thorp's gaming of the system and how he ended up the unlikely father of wearable computing. Eyes-On has a look at Sennheiser's cans, Hands-on grabs up both of the new iPhones and IRL takes a gaming focus. Jump down to your digital library of choice to snag your copy and settle in for a gadget-centric history lesson. Distro Issue 107 PDF Distro in the iTunes App Store Distro in the Google Play Store Distro in the Windows Store Distro APK (for sideloading) Like Distro on Facebook Follow Distro on Twitter
inWatch One smartwatch has GSM connectivity and a heavily skinned version of Android
From Kickstarter projects to rumored devices from the biggest gadget manufacturers on earth, smartwatches of all kinds are popping up all over the world. The latest such wearable was unearthed by our good friends at Engadget Chinese, and is called inWatch One. It sets itself apart from other smartwatches with a custom version of Android 4.2 and a GSM SIM card slot to give your wrist access to mobile voice and data networks. inWatch has a 1.54-inch 240 x 240 capacitive display, a dual-core 1.2GHz CPU of unknown origin, a 2-megapixel camera and a 500mAh battery. Connectivity comes courtesy of the aforementioned GSM (likely for China-friendly 900/1800/2100 MHz bands), WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS radios. As for that custom Android build, dubbed inDroid, its been tailored to fit the watch's smaller screen and works with some of China's most popular apps; WeChat, Sina Weibo, QQ and Baidu music are all supported. Interested? It's available now on the company's website for RMB 1,788 (about $293 US).
Google Glass is, in fact, compatible with prescription glasses
We learned a lot about Google Glass yesterday at SXSW, including a sample of the kinds of apps it will be running when it becomes available to the public. Today on Google+, the Project Glass team let out a bit of rather important hardware info: namely that Glass is compatible with prescription glasses. Turns out that its "design is modular, so you will be able to add frames and lenses that match your prescription," though the team is still working on the frame design to get it juuust right. The prescription compatibility won't be ready for the Explorer edition of Glass, but we can expect the frames to officially debut "later this year."
Researchers print biometric sensors directly on skin, make wearable health monitors more durable
MC10 might be best known for its wearable electronics aimed at athletes, but the company also makes a medical diagnostic sticker called a biostamp. Its creator (and MC10 co-founder), John Rogers has refined that design so that it's no longer an elastomer sticker -- now he can apply the biostamp's thin, stretchy electronics directly on human skin, and bond it with commercially available spray-on bandage material. By losing the elastomer backing of the original biostamp and applying the circuits directly to the skin, Rogers and his team at the University of Illinois were able to shave the device's thickness to 1/30th of the (already quite thin) biostamp. That super thin profile means it conforms even better to the contours of human hide and makes it shower- and swim-proof during the two weeks it lasts before being naturally exfoliated with your skin. For those unfamiliar with what the biostamp does, it's a mesh of circuits and sensors that can record electrophysiological data like skin temperature and hydration state of the wearer. The new biostamp won't be in your doctor's tool box any time soon, however, as Rogers and his team are still refining the wireless power and communication technologies it leverages. Of course, once those problems are solved, there's a good chance we'll see MC10 turning it into a commercial product.
Reebok and mc10 team up to build CheckLight, a head impact indicator (hands-on)
Concussions have always been a concern for those who play contact sports. However, there's been a renewed focus in recent years by the sports community -- the NFL in particular -- to learn more about concussions in the interests of promoting player safety. Pro leagues aren't the only folks tackling the problem, though. Verizon, Intel and Ridell are all building systems to help identify concussed players. Reebok and mc10 have collaborated to create CheckLight, a head impact indicator meant to make it easy to see when an athlete has taken a dangerous blow to the head. The CheckLight is composed of two parts: a sensor device built by mc10 and skull-cap made by Reebok. The sensor itself is a strip of plastic filled with flexible sensors connected to a small microcontroller module with three indicator LEDs and a micro-USB port. One LED serves as a battery level indicator, one flashes yellow after moderate impacts and a third flashes red for severe blows. mc10 wasn't willing to share the exact hardware inside, but we know that it's got a rechargeable battery and has rotational acceleration, multi-directional acceleration, impact location and impact duration sensors. Data from those sensors is then run through the company's proprietary algorithm to determine when to fire the LEDs. We got to chat with Isaiah Kacyvenski -- mc10's Director of Licensing and Business development and ex-NFL player -- about the CheckLight and the role it has to play in keeping athletes safe, so join us after the break for more.
Our augmented selves: The promise of wearable computing
By Donald Melanson and Michael Gorman It's been an interesting year for Google's most famous side project. After emerging from the company's suitably mysterious X Lab in April, Glass appeared across the roundtable from Charlie Rose, gave conference attendees a skydiver's eye view at Google I/O, strutted down the catwalk at New York Fashion Week and shared the stage with California Governor Jerry Brown as he signed a bill into law allowing self-driving cars on the state's roads. Yet, there's still more that we don't know about Google Glass than we know about it, despite its status as the highest-profile attempt at making wearable computing the next big thing. Public demonstrations of the tech have so far only hinted at its full potential. The promise of Glass echoes that of wearable computing in general, a promise that's remained largely unfulfilled despite decades of research driven by everyone from the military to DIYers.
Memoto camera wants to capture your life -- every 30 seconds
Perhaps you saw my post last week about Lightt, a new social app that allows you to capture highlights of your life in 10-picture snaps and share that stream with friends. Now a new Kickstarter project from Swedish company Memoto wants to create a photographic record of your life by giving you a postage-stamp sized wearable camera coupled with an iPhone app to send a photo to a web service every 30 seconds. The act of capturing your life in this manner is known as lifelogging, and has been going on for some time. The idea of making lifelogging technology affordable and inconspicuous is what Memoto is all about. The Memoto camera measures 36x36x9 mm, captures 5-megapixel images, keeps a log of GPS positions and timestamps, and has an accelerometer to ensure that photos are always oriented correctly. There's a micro-USB port for charging the device's battery, which is expected to last for two days per charge. Once the images are uploaded, software works to "organize the photos to work as a photographic memory that can be accessed at any time, even after many years, without the user ever feeling overwhelmed or disorganized." The images are catalogued by time, date, place and lighting conditions. The team expects the Memoto camera to be available in early 2013 at a price of US$279, but backers who pledge $199 or more through Kickstarter will get a camera (in graphite grey, arctic white or Memoto orange) and a one-year web service subscription.
Researchers use bioimpedance as a biometric, let health monitor devices know who you are
Wouldn't it be great if fitness and medical gadgets automatically knew who was wearing them? Researchers from Dartmouth have come up with a new way to provide health monitors just such an ability using a tiny electric current and a bioimpedance sensor. You see, each person's body provides a different amount of opposition to electrical current, so bioimpedance can be a unique biometric identifier. The researchers' idea is to create a bracelet that uses bioimpedance readings to recognize its wearer in a secure, unobtrusive manner and communicate that identity to other wearable devices. Using such a bracelet, "the devices discover each other's presence, recognize that they are on the same body (and transitively learn from the wrist device whose body), develop shared secrets from which to derive encryption keys, and establish reliable and secure communications." As opposed to other biometrics or password authentication, bioimpedance readings can be taken passively, which is much more appealing than remembering passcodes or scanning fingerprints and retinas. For now, the researchers have created an eight-electrode proof-of-concept bracelet, but its accuracy leaves something to be desired -- it correctly identifies its wearer only 80 to 90 percent of the time, whereas fingerprint recognition has a failure rate of less than 1 in 1,000. So, we're a ways off from bioimpedance-based security, but research is ongoing, and you can learn all about it at the source below.
EES packs circuits into temporary tattoos, makes medical diagnostics fashionable
Flexible circuit pioneer John Rogers and his team are at it again. This time he's developing a wearable, ultra-thin circuit that attaches to your skin just like a temporary tattoo. The Epidermal Electronic System (EES) consists of circuits which could contain electrodes capable of measuring brain, heart and muscle activity in the same way an EEG does now, transmitting this data wirelessly to your doctor. Because it's flexible and bonds to the skin, it can be worn for extended periods, unlike traditional diagnostic pads used in hospitals today. In the lab, the devices were solar-powered with embedded photovoltaic cells -- heavier duty circuits would require inductive charging to be practical. Rogers' team also looked into the tech acting as a game controller (they wired it up to someone's throat and played Sokoban with voice commands, still managing to yield a 90 percent accuracy rate), but it's some way off from replacing your SIXAXIS. One of the problems encountered concerned RF communication -- perhaps they should get on the horn to their friends in Oregon and build those fashionable diagnostic pants we're eagerly waiting for.
