For the first time, a Paralympic team is getting data on the athletes’ movements instead of data on the wheelchair only thanks to Rithmio, a leading motion recognition company. Rithmio was founded in 2014 when doctoral student Adam Tilton partnered with his academic advisor Prashant Mehta, an associate professor of mechanical science and engineering to found […]
Tag Archives: Rio 2016
How to derive real value from “smarter” connected health products
Now that the wide selection of “quantified self” products — like FitBit and Jawbone — have bled over from the fitness fanatics to mainstream consumers, we’ve reached a tipping point in which we should expect more from our connected products. Consumers have become accustomed to looking at readouts that assess our own personal health, but […]
Is the Cybathlon the future of the Paralympics?
With the 2016 Paralympics kicking off in a couple of weeks, highly trained athletes are preparing for a range of competitive events that pit people with similar disabilities against each other in 528 events sports including wheelchair basketball, blind rugby and canoe sprints. But as sports training and equipment becomes more technologically advanced, some are […]
McDonald’s Happy Meal wearable rubs people the wrong way
McDonald’s has prematurely ended fitness tracker sales in the U.S. and Canada, which came inside the fast-food chain’s Happy Meal. Intended as a way to get kids active, McDonald’s inadvertently caused a lot of parents to worry what was happening to their child’s skin. It received complaints from customers about skin irritation a few hours […]
Report says Rio athletes want more out of their wearables
Wearables are becoming commonplace in practice games and training, but have received a lukewarm response from athletes, unhappy with the lack of advice or instructions. Athletes see the advantages of using wearables, according to a report from Lux Research, but want to see wearable providers take more of an active role on the advice side. […]
Wearables making a big splash in Olympic swimming this year
It’s been another wild year in swimming at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The last events wrap up today, but it’s been hard to miss the appearance of more technology poolside this year, even if all you noticed were the headphones helping Michael Phelps maintain his death-stare: But getting into the zone while on deck […]
Will Rio athletes trade their Halo for medals?
The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio bring not only teams of highly trained athletes but also bags full of wearable technology which aims to monitor the health and physicality of athletics as they prepare for peak performance. In these latest Games, we see sports psychology usurped by neuroscience that is designed to maximize the power of […]
Brain.fm brings musical AI to Rio Olympics’ training
Music is extremely powerful. We all accept that it can affect our emotions and the way we feel, but science is showing that it has more direct effects on the brain as well, particularly when it is paired with wearables devices. Brain.fm is a freemium auditory program designed to help people either focus, relax or sleep […]
USA Cycling drafts off IBM cloud in Rio gold hunt
In the ramp up to the Rio Olympics, USA Cycling Women’s Team Pursuit is boosting riders’ performance through connected devices and wearables that generate real-time insights via IBM’s Apache Spark cloud-based data analytics. Performance insights gained from data analytics are increasingly used as a training tool in the hyper-competitive field of top-tier sport, especially in […]
Olympic athletes will sport Visa IoT rings at Rio games
Forget about Olympic medals, the jewelry Olympic athletes will be donning during the Olympic Games in Rio will be a little more subtle. Visa has created a new ring that replaces credit/debit cards, and the Olympic games are being positioned as its proving grounds for the technology. For athletes, keeping up with keys and cards […]