Wearable Tech: More Than Just Entertainment
With the increase in major brands producing wearable tech, some companies are looking to use this uptick to aide the health and safety of people…and animals.
Wearable technology has begun to take a strong hold of the consumer market with companies like Apple, Samsung, Sony, Garmin, and Fitbit flogging their latest wares to those of us who feel compelled to show off the latest in fashionable tech on our bodies. Although many of these products serve quite a simple purpose, there are companies whose products can be put to a more practical, and beneficial use other than reading a WhatsApp message on your wrist.
Google Life Sciences rebranded to Verily approximately one year ago. Plans are beginning to come to fruition for a contact lens which can detect glucose levels, and last year, Verily announced a deal to collaborate with the American Heart Association for five years, the aim of which is to bring new approaches to the prevention, causes and treatment of heart disease.
CEO of Wisewear, Gerald Wilmink, will be speaking at DTS 2017. Wilminks company’s aim is to make “smart jewellery that keeps you safe”. Wisewear’s iOS and Android compatible fashionable, 18 carat gold or palladium plated bracelet features a built-in panic button, once the panic button is activated, the wearer’s emergency contacts receive a text message and a pin is dropped on the wearer’s location. The bracelet also emits vibrations to remind the wearer of important phone calls and calendar events, tracks steps and calories burned, as well as allow the wearer to set and track goals via an app.
Earlier this year, Apple unveiled their fully wireless earphones, Airpods, with a lot of backlash subsequently coming their way. They’re not the first company to undertake such an endeavour, as Bragi’s, The Dash, earphones were established on Kickstarter back in 2014 with an initial goal of just over a quarter of a million US dollars. Within 48 hours the campaign had surpassed its goal and by the time fundraising campaign ended, Bragi had remarkably raised more than $3million thanks to 16,000 supporters, making it the most successful European crowdfunding campaign ever.
The Dash can store up to 4gb of music or 1,000 songs, can track pace, steps, distance, heart rate and even oxygen saturation, and allow communication through an embedded ear bone microphone. Bragi Founder and CEO, and DTS 2017 speaker, Nikolaj Hviid, said the company’s “vision is to create discrete computers that entertains and takes care of you, helping you to understand your body and get better at what you do. We hope it will enable people to do things they couldn’t do before.”
Of course, people aren’t the only benefactors of wearable technology; Tractive is a European market leader for wearable tech for pets. Tractive’s GPS allows pet owners to locate their pet at any time, Motion allows them to track their pet’s activity, and Pet-Remote lets them issue commands to a wearable collar, all operated through an app. They also have other apps “to make daily life easier for you and your four-legged friend”.
Engineer and fashion technology designer, Lina Wassong, will also be speaking at DTS 2017. Wassong is at the forefront of wearable tech as she often blends traditional craftsmanship with digital fabrication techniques in her designs. Craftsman and designer, Mladen Barbaric, will also take to the stage at DTS 2017. His company, InstruMents, designed 01, “the world’s first dimension instrument”, and a perfect example of his goal to find elegant solutions to complex problems.
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Matthew Colfer
