What if the walls of your home were monitoring your every breath and heart rate? It might seem a little too sci-fi right now, but MIT researchers are working toward technology that will make this notion a reality. Their latest innovation is called Vital-Radio, and it can be seamlessly implanted into the walls of any smart home, according to the researchers’ paper, “Smart Homes that Monitor Breathing and Heart Rate.”
This might not be a concern for you in your everyday life, unless you have an infant or an elderly parent. These individuals could benefit from having their vitals monitored continuously when the baby’s sleeping or for your grandmother who lives alone.
The researchers claim that Vital-Radio has a 99-percent accuracy rate. Users can be up to one room away, or eight meters, from the technology. Additionally, the vital signs of multiple people can be monitored all at once; it isn’t just Grandma Edna or baby Billy who will selectively benefit from Vital-Radio.
Vital-Radio works by using low-power wireless signals to record movements such as exhales and heartbeats. The signals bounce back to the technology, which measures the amount of time it takes for them to return. The technology is also smart enough to isolate reflections that may come off of furniture and other objects within a home. Eventually, it may be able to adjust the environment based on your vitals. Imagine a soft, calming hue and a classical tune kicking in during periods of high stress.
“If non-intrusive in-home continuous monitoring of breathing and heartbeats existed, it would enable healthcare professionals to study how these signals correlate with our stress level and evolve with time and age, which could have a major impact on our healthcare system,” wrote the authors of the report.
Though they actually built a working prototype, researchers still have a long way to go before any of this technology is available to consumers. Still, walls already support your house; one day, they could give your vitals a boost, too.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.