Internet of Things & Wearable Technology Insights

A startup has developed processors it claims could let wearable devices run for up to a month without a battery charge.

Ineda Systems' new Dhanush processors are targeted at fitness tracker bands, smartwatches, sensor devices, wearable cameras and other electronics, whose batteries at best last several days today.

The company is developing four chips with varying power consumption and processing capabilities. They are designed to work within the power constraints of these types of devices....

Whistle is an activity monitor for dogs designed to provide key insights into your dog’s behavior by tracking daily activities and health trends.

Whistle collects data on your dog 24/7, sending updates to your phone that provide key insights into your dog’s activity, rest periods and overall health & wellness....

Scientists in the UK developing wearable electronics have knitted a flexible fabric that delivers twice the power output of current energy harvesting textiles.

There is considerable interest and research into wearable piezoelectric energy harvesters that use waste energy from human movement or the ambient environment to power low-energy consuming wearable devices, such as wireless sensors and consumer electronics. Typically these materials are ceramic-based with limited flexibility, so aren’t that comfortable to wear, and include toxic elements like lead. They also involve charge-collecting metallic electrodes with poor fatigue resistance that fail after repeated use. New, less rigid materials with sufficient mechanical strength and an all-in-one design are therefore highly sought after.

The polymeric piezoelectric fibres created by Navneet Soin at the University of Bolton and colleagues in the laboratory of Elias Siores fulfill all of the above: they are flexible, strong and breathable.

Energy harvesting fabric is soft yet strong

A new breed of wearables is not only tracking our movements, but analyzing them in a way that previously required a console, a computer, or a trip to a full-fledged lab.

Wearable technology has been around in some form since the 17th century. However, it is only in the last five years, with the miniaturization of technology that it has started to emerge as a game changer for consumers and business.

Ring is, like its name suggests, a ring: a chunky silver thing meant to be worn on your index finger. It's equipped with a slew of sensors, including Bluetooth, a touch sensor on the side, a vibration motor, several kinds of motion sensors (like an accelerometer), and an LED display (just a few dots, at the moment). It syncs with your phone, which interprets various air-scrawling movements and performs whatever action you want. That might be writing a text--it has its own way of writing the alphabet, sort of like the handwriting recognition tool on an old Palm Pilot, as well as lots of shortcuts to trigger different apps. You can also customize your air-writing symbols, or invent your own new ones. The app can network with all kinds of different gadgets, provided they connect to the Internet (this is also known as "the Internet of things").

Seeing that far ahead is nearly impossible, but making educated guesses about the next five or 10 years is more realistic. Technology is iterative; the new replaces the old in fits and starts. PCs made big mainframes obsolete, and now smartphones and tablets are doing the same to desktops. Even applications like Facebook that are still thought to be relatively new could eventually be replaced by challengers like Instagram and Snapchat.

Which emerging technologies ultimately will rule the day? Only the future knows, but here are five that we think are promising and intriguing....