Most of us picture science fiction shows when we think about wearable tech. We imagine an actor with glued on ears giving the wall his lunch request. Or the shot of a cyborg’s vision, telling him that the pigtailed young girl is unarmed. These things all seemed pretty far-fetched when we saw them onscreen less than a decade ago, but current technology is not far from realizing what we first thought of as fiction.
There is already a whole artillery of wearable tech available at the moment, most of which is centered on monitoring our health. These range from very basic wristbands, such as Nike’s FuelBand
that tracks the intensity of your workouts and shares it with your friends, to others like the Samsung Gear Fit, which are more like smart watches, in that you can make and receive calls during your jog as well as having your heart rate monitored. This all in one device is undeniably handy for those who like to keep fit, but it’s fair to say that overall they have as yet failed to impress the tech savvy masses.
A Market That’s Hard To Impress
Perhaps trying to compress everything a smartphone can do into a device that fits onto your wrist is not the future – after all it will either be too cumbersome or too fiddly to use properly. Besides, it is just the same technology in a different format. So what instead? Well the Ritot Watch might just answer that question.
Ritot watch is a screen-less metal wristband that projects the time onto your hand at the press of a button. The color of this display can be changed using a rather neat looking docking station. The project, that appeared on a crowd-funding site, IndieGogo, has proved incredibly popular receiving the backing of over 6,000 funders. The project’s monetary target of $50,000 was shattered; as of 08/21/2014 they had received $1,022,307. The developers have since been able to create more features, designs, and packaging.
Using an app, the watch can vibrate and project reminders, weather notifications, text messages, and even incoming calls directly onto your hand, which disappear at the shake of your wrist. The watch even lets you know when you have a Facebook or Twitter message, so wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you will always be at the beckoned call of social networking. Granted, this may be a slightly pessimistic viewpoint, but this piece of tech will undeniably re-spark debates about our social media addiction.
It’s All In The Wrist
From one wristband that vibrates to another that senses movement. Reemo is a gesture band that converts a series of arm gestures into commands. Receivers hooked up to various household appliances then interpret these commands and turn on. Simple and elegant. The applications for such technology are countless, most notably for the elderly and those with limited muscle control.
This wearable tech is only in the prototyping stage at the moment, but is already able to turn the user into the equivalent of a computer mouse, allowing them to point and click at real world appliances to turn them on or off. Receivers can be fitted to anything from alarm clocks to window blinds. The band itself can control anything that uses the usual computer binary code.
The developer also mentions the possibility of its use in the gaming world. We have seen this before, to a certain extent, in the Wii controller. But this device promises much more in terms of precision and control.
Clothing
As we can see from the Reemo wristband, most wearable tech is about improving our lives in some way. This is certainly true of AiQ smart clothing. The range has been developed to monitor the information our body produces. It does this by recording our own electrical currents that flow through our skin. The clothing is made of fabric that has super-thin stainless steel fibers woven throughout. These fibers pick up the electrical currents we produce.
At present, the clothing can monitor heart rates, but AiQ are working with universities in Taiwan in the hope that the clothing can be used to measure much more. In theory, the items should be able to measure anything that uses a current, this includes EEG, ECG, muscle strength, fat content, and even stress levels.
The clothing is powered using a small clip-on Bluetooth Module. This will make the monitoring of athletes or those with health issues much easier and, more importantly, much more comfortable for them.
More Wrist Action
We return back to wristbands briefly as we look at the SUNSprite by Goodlux. This small device uses a series of sensors to measure the wearer’s UVA and UVB exposure from the sun. As we are all too aware sunburn can be painful, not to mention the potential long term damage extended sun exposure can cause.
This watch-like device enables users to program in their specific skin type. The watch then warns them when they have hit their sun exposure limit.
Like all of the most useful tech, this watch was developed using technology from NASA. The device is still in its early stages, but developers plan to incorporate Bluetooth, allowing the device to share information with the user’s smartphone.
A Spectacle To Behold
We, of course, could not look at wearable tech without mentioning Google Glass. The notion of these has been around for some time. Prototypes of the product were available for journalists to try two years ago, but now it is finally our turn. But what do they actually do? Well, quite a bit, actually. A prism over your right eye projects a semi translucent image onto the glasses. The user simply looks up slightly to view the image. The controls basically work in the same way as Siri or similar voice command software. The wearer says a phrase like, “OK, Glass, how do I make a cake?” and up pops the ingredients and a recipe.
The glasses can receive video calls and record video. Several apps will be available including one called Field Trip, which projects facts into your vision as you stroll along.
All very futuristic I’m sure you will agree, but the debate over whether people will wear them is still raging. Some say it is merely another distraction from the real world, others say being able to carry such technology around will get us out from behind our desks. Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure – technology is always improving, and in the years to come we will certainly be seeing more and more wearable tech.
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William Thompson
William Thompson is the Marketing Manager at Power Admin, a server monitoring software business in the Kansas City area. You can find him on Google+ and Twitter. William has been a professional in website design, digital marketing and 3D/graphic design for over 20 years.