“The Vital Signs Camera App of Philips measures your heart rate and breathing rate remotely, simply using the iPad 2 camera. This breakthrough technology allows you to measure your vital signs in an easy and unobtrusive way at home. ” - Phillips
(via Vincent Everts)
“The adizero f50 boot includes a cavity in the outsole unit which houses the revolutionary miCoach SPEED_CELL™. The miCoach SPEED_CELL™ captures 360° movement and measures key performance metrics including speed, average speed (recorded every second), maximum speed (recorded every five seconds), number of sprints, distance, distance at high intensity levels, steps and stride rates. The on-board memory stores all your measurements during your game or training for up to seven hours and then wirelessly transmits the on pitch performance data to your tablet, PC or MAC.”
Comments [0]
Madhumita Venkataramanan, contributor
(Image: Plessy Semiconductors)
A new type of sensor can continuously monitor your heart rate without actually touching you.
The chip, known as the Electric Potential Integrated Circuit (EPIC) biosensor, is essentially a super-sensitive digital voltmeter which can measure tiny changes in electrical fields around all muscles and nerves.
The final product will be integrated into hospital beds, from where it will unobtrusively monitor a patient's vital signs, doing away with pesky tubes, leads and wires. It can track movement not only in heart muscles, but also muscles in the lungs, limbs and eyes.
The sensor's special twist is a filtering technology which isolates and spits out the exact measurement you want. So, if you're looking for eyeball movements, the sensor will comply, without confusing you with an ECG reading.
Plessey's scientists hope it can be used to help paraplegics. Because the EPIC chip can track eye movements, you could hook it up to a computer or a wheelchair, allowing quadriplegics to control a mouse cursor or move a motorised wheelchair, simply by shifting their gaze. Amputees could also benefit - those who have residual electrical activity could use the EPIC sensor to redirect this activity to a prosthetic limb, allowing natural movement.
Moving from the clinic to the couch, the EPIC chip is also a video game developer's fantasy - it can be integrated into new hands-free gaming controllers, like the Microsoft Kinect, by tracking slight physiological changes.
Comments [2]
Comments [0]
As more and more security measures are being brought in to make internet banking securer than ever before, it was only a matter of time before we saw similar precautions introduced at ATM machines. Now, Moscow-based Sberbank has developed a banking machine that can tell when a patron is lying.
Designed to help combat consumer credit fraud, Sberbank’s new ATM features voice-analysis technology developed by the Speech Technology Center, a Russian firm that also serves the Russian Federal Security Service, according to a report in the New York Times. Credit card applications for brand-new customers can reportedly be handled through the device, which will ask — and analyze the veracity of answers to — questions including, “Are you employed?” and “At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?” As part of the application process, the ATM will also scan the applicant’s passport, record fingerprints and take a 3D scan for facial recognition. To comply with privacy laws, the bank will reportedly store customers’ voice prints on chips contained in their own credit cards rather than on its servers.
Though the new ATM design is still in the prototype stages, Sberbank plans to install such machines in malls and bank branches around the country, the NYT reports. Financial institutions elsewhere in the world: time to think about introducing something similar?
Website: www.sbrf.ru
Contact: sbrf@sberbank.ru
Spotted by: Gabriel Vanduinen
Related Ideas:
Comments [0]
Haptic shoe could replace the white cane
"The basic idea behind Le Chal is that one of the user’s shoes will provide haptic feedback, guiding the user toward their destination by vibrating in the front, back, or on either side – a vibration on the front indicates that they should keep going straight, a vibration on the left side means that they should turn left, and so on. The user begins by entering their destination on Google Maps, using their Le Chal-app-running Android smartphone. That phone then communicates by Bluetooth with a LilyPad Arduino circuit board, located in the heel of the shoe. Following the Google-supplied turn-by-turn directions, along with locational data from its own GPS unit, the phone gets the Arduino to activate each of the shoe’s four vibrators as needed. The vibrations start out low, but build in intensity as the user nears points where they have to turn. A proximity sensor in the front of the shoe also alerts the user to obstacles, which it can detect from up to ten feet (three meters) away."
via Gizmag
Comments [0]
Instant Health Checks for Buildings and Bridges
"To automatically detect tiny faults and relay their precise locations, civil engineer Simon Laflamme of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues are devising a “sensing skin”—flexible patches that glue to areas where cracks are likely to occur and continuously monitor them. The formation of a crack would cause a tiny movement in the concrete under a patch, causing a change in the electrical charge stored in the sensing skin, which is made of stretchable plastic mixed with titanium oxide. Every day a computer attached to a collection of patches would send out a current to measure each patch’s charge, a system that Laflamme and his colleagues detail in the Journal of Materials Chemistry."
via Scientific American
Comments [0]
Comments [0]
Fireball - a prototype 500g throwable sensor “grenade” from Intel allows firemen to monitor temperature and levels of specific gases (ammonia, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide). The data is sent to a server in the fire engine, then sent back to the firefighters via smartphones or other devices. Multiple sensors can be used simultaneously and their data aggregated to help the firefighters build a better picture of the situation.
Future versions of the fireball will triangulate between themselves and the server to relay their location as well as sensor data.
Comments [0]
Comments [0]