Body-adapted Wearable Electronics

rom Google Glass to the Fitbit wristband, wearable technology has generated significant attention over the past year, with most existing devices helping people to better understand their personal health and fitness by monitoring exercise, heart rate, sleep patterns, and so on. The sector is shifting beyond external wearables like wristbands or clip-on devices to “body-adapted” electronics that further push the ever-shifting boundary between humans and technology.

The new generation of wearables is designed to adapt to the human body’s shape at the place of deployment. These wearables are typically tiny, packed with a wide range of sensors and a feedback system, and camouflaged to make their use less intrusive and more socially acceptable. These virtually invisible devices include earbuds that monitor heart rate, sensors worn under clothes to track posture, a temporary tattoo that tracks health vitals and haptic shoe soles that communicate GPS directions through vibration alerts felt by the feet. The applications are many and varied: haptic shoes are currently proposed for helping blind people navigate, while Google Glass has already been worn by oncologists to assist in surgery via medical records and other visual information accessed by voice commands.

Technology analysts consider that success factors for wearable products include device size, non-invasiveness, and the ability to measure multiple parameters and provide real-time feedback that improves user behaviour. However, increased uptake also depends on social acceptability as regards privacy. For example, concerns have been raised about wearable devices that use cameras for facial recognition and memory assistance. Assuming these challenges can be managed, analysts project hundreds of millions of devices in use by 2016.

Comments

How To Change Facebook Theme

There are few ways to accomplish it, but I’ll show you the best and easiest. Before we go any further though, you’ll need to be using either Google Chrome or Firefox as your internet browser. Both are today’s fastest and most popular browsers. You should already be using one of them, even if you decide not to change the look of Facebook. Changing your Facebook theme with Stylish Stylish is a browser extension that really sets itself apart from the competition for a number of reasons. It’s highly customizable, there’s a lot of themes available, it’s easy to use, and it can also be used to change the look of many other popular sites including YouTube, Twitter, MySpace and Google, should you wish to do so. Using Stylish in Google Chrome STEP 1 – First you will need to install the Stylish extension from the Chrome Web Store. Just click the “Add To Chrome” button as shown in the picture bellow. A confirmation box will appear, click “add”. STEP 2 – You’ll now see a little button with the le...

3D Printing

3D printing is something that is already possible, but those printers are currently commercial-only solutions with the absolute cheapest coming in at a little over $10,000. In late 2013, we can expect the technology to significantly drop in price to the point where it will enter the consumer market. So how does it work? The material is gradually deposited through a controlled nozzle, layer by layer, building up to a fully formed product, made of plastic or metal. Imagine being able to draw a case for your phone in Photoshop then printing out!

The Future of the Internet: Dark and Ubiquitous

In the future, the Internet will be like the electricity that runs through our daily lives, more ubiquitous but also more invisible. At least, this is the vision expressed by many experts in a recent survey of the Internet project Pew Research Center. In a survey conducted to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the World Wide Web, 1,867 privacy, technology and cyber security experts were asked about the future of the Internet in 2025. Most experts agree that the Internet will become an integral part of everyday life and that technology is becoming commonplace. But many experts also see a threat sitting on the horizon - some fear that digital distribution will promote inequality. Others believe that privacy will become a luxury for the rich, and that governments and businesses will rely on surveillance and social control.

NEW TECHNOLOGY

Search This Blog