There is a lot of potential in devices such as smartwatches, fitness bands and even smart glasses. Wearable tech has the potential to change a lot of things in our future and make things easier in the case of bureaucracy and even personal fitness
Photo Credits: Pg3. LEAD_2
If you think of wearable technology, you’ll instantly think of brands like Fitbit, Samsung’s Galaxy Gear, the Apple watches, the Xiaomi bands and smart glasses projects like Google Glass. As for what these products can be used for, after a bit of thought most people would come up with a few sensible use cases – like taking pictures using voice commands, keeping track of your daily calorie expenditure or receiving inbound messages. Now try and imagine this, what might wearable technology be used for in the future – perhaps 10 years into the future? A bit lost? Here’s some insight.
Healthcare
Today’s range of body sensors can already measure an impressive range of parameters - Stride length, distance, step count, cadence and speed, Heart rate, skin temperature, skin moisture levels, breathing rate, breathing volume, activity intensity, Body temperature, Calories burned, distance travelled, Sleep quality, sleep patterns etc.
But there is presently no way to measure aspects of blood chemistry, or other parameters that can only be measured by sensors that reside inside the body. If such an ‘in-body’ sensor could be developed then this would open up a completely new paradigm for healthcare. More than just an ‘early warning system;’ for serious illnesses, such in-body sensors could have a major impact on many areas of the global healthcare industry. Average life expectancy would increase: The ability to ‘listen’ for the warning signs of serious illnesses or diseases would mean that the average lifespan would be increased; GDP would increase: If the average lifespan on the workforce was increased by, say, five years then this would imply a substantial increase in overall economic activity.
Diet Management
Imagine combining an in-body sensor that could measure key nutritional parameters about the user (above) with a cloud-based service that could analyse those parameters to provide feedback to the user about what they should be eating. The service provider would then be able to make recommendations as to what the user should buy when at the supermarket. Furthermore, the same service could make recommendations for a personal or family-optimised menu at mealtimes. Because the service would know whether they user had any mineral or other deficiencies or excesses, then a suitable menu could be recommended. This could be in the form of tablet supplements or just a recommendation like “How about some rajma tonight? You should have some in the fridge.”
Personal Trainer
One of the main problems that individuals encounter when embarking on a personal fitness programme is lack of knowledge to train efficiently – rather than just train. If a fitness tracking system were to be combined with a wireless earbud system and a cloud-based ‘personal trainer’ service then this problem could be addressed. Having set up an online account and uploaded a week’s data the service would have a fairly detailed understanding of the user’s current fitness. This understanding could be enhanced by the user inserting their wireless earbud to receive requests such as ‘perform 10 push ups’ and then ‘perform 10 squats’ etc. The results of this exercise could be used by the service to fine tune its understanding of the user’s current fitness level. Next, having chosen their desired fitness objective, the service could provide encouragement and advice to the user during each workout – such as “Rahul, you could do with working a bit harder here – I’d like to see your heart rate at 160.”
Police and Security
It is interesting to think what might become possible if smart glasses are combined with police databases and facial recognition software. We are not too far from the point when a police officer could user a pair of smart glasses to automatically obtain information about a person that was within the officer’s field of view – simply by asking or by setting a default. This could be possible in real time as a police officer was speaking to a person with the resulting information being projected onto the officer’s field of view.The smart glasses could take a picture of that person and send it to a cloud-based police service where facial recognition technology would match the picture with an entry in a police database.
