Wearable Technology Sensation @ Rio Olympics 2016

Wearable devices changed the way athletes train. Olympians have started using data collected by wearables which makes the sports more interesting. These devices are protecting athlete’s health and protecting them from serious injuries. The wearables are making them much better, faster and stronger.

A. Visa NFC ring: Visa –the only card accepted at official Olympic venues in Rio, has created Near Field Communications (NFC) technology ring for payments at the Olympic Games terminals that accept contactless payments at about 4,000 NFC POS terminals. Primarily testing with 45 Visa-sponsored Olympic athletes, is being used to pay for purchases by merely waving their hand. The ring is designed by McLear & Coand equipped with a Gemalto microchip.

B. LumiWave: Team USA’s vaunted gymnastics teams are using LumiWave, a wearable pain-relief device, to overcome their aches and strains. This device was Cleared by the U.S. Food and drug Administration. LumiWave’s Infrared Light Therapy is to provide relief for minor joint and muscle. The device beams infrared light into body tissue via its eight pods.The infrared light provides short-term pain relief by helping to increase blood flow.

 

C. Whoop: Swimmers Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte and Team USA Basketball point guard Kyle Lowry used Whoop– a wearable tech bracelet that tracks data on the user’s sleep patterns, heart rate and physical exertion during training. It then uses the combined data to provides a blueprint of how to change their habits to improve athletic performance and avoid overtraining.

D. Solos: The indoor cycling team members have smart eye wear called Solos that display important stats in real time as they cycle. It provides real-time data on metrics such as speed, cadence, heart rate, calories, and distance and elevation.The eyewear also features innovative voice technology, which enables riders to communicate with their coaches mid-race. The data appears in real-time so cyclists know if they are moving at their projected pace. Cyclists can even view this information while they ride via a micro-sized pupil display.

E. Vert Wearable Jump Monitor: The U.S. women’s indoor volleyball team members are using tech to track the height of their jumps. VERT is worn around players’ waists to calculate how high, as well as how many times they jump. The allows the team to track how many times a certain position is jumping and very quickly, they can change their practices based on this data.

F. Hexoskin smart shirt: Combining three types of integrated sensors, this smart shirtmeasures biometrics such as heart rate, breathing, pace, and sleeping habits, and is one of the few on the market that measures electrical activity of the heart using an electrocardiogram. The information gathered by the smart shirt can be immediately synced to a phone or tablet via Bluetooth.

G. Halo Sport: Halo Neuroscience has created a a headset called Halo Sport–maximizing the power of mind. Neuropriming uses pulses of energy to increase the excitability of motor neurons, benefiting athletes in two ways: accelerated strength and skill acquisition.Members of the US Ski team that trained with the headphones improved their “jump force” by 31%, compared with an 18% increase in a control group that did the same training without the device.


Most of these technologies are not yet available to consumers yet and are being tested in the Brazil games. Wearables are helping the athletes to speed up against their competition. According to  Wizards Island research reportFitbit, focused on a single use for health and fitness tracking, continues to dominate overall wearable segment sales, leading with 4.8 million shipments and 24.5 percent marketshare in quarter one, up one million units from last year. Garmin finished slightly ahead of Samsung on the strength of its wristbands and watches appealing to a wide range of athletes, most especially golfers, runners, and fitness tracker enthusiasts

 

 

This article originally appeared on this website. 

Sarah Ebling

          Sarah Ebling holds a professorship in Accessibility Studies at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) and is a senior researcher at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on natural language processing in the context of disabilities and special needs, specifically, sign language technology and automatic text simplification. Her groups’ contributions involve artificial intelligence techniques with a strong emphasis on user involvement. She is involved in various international and national projects and leads a large-scale Swiss innovation initiative entitled „Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies“ (2022-2026; https://www.iict.uzh.ch/).