Sensaura monitors your emotions through your fitness tracker
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Wrist based heart rate tracking is fast becoming a standard feature of wearables. While the data is questionable when it comes to high intensity activities, no one can deny its use when it comes to lower intensity activities and calculating your resting heart rate. After all, your resting heart rate is perhaps the best indicator of your health and fitness.
Essential reading: Guide to lowering your resting heart rate with wearables
Now, a Canadian startup called Sensaura has found an innovative use of the heart rate data churned out by your favourite fitness tracker. The company is planing to release an emotion recognition platform/app, which utilises wearables you already own to understand your emotions.
Through a machine-learning proprietary algorithm developed by the company’s CTO Mojtaba Khomami, a PhD candidate at the University of Trento in Italy, the app is able to perform pattern analysis based on your heart rate and skin conductivity. Apparently, the algorithm can detect joy and excitiment in a person’s vitals information as easily and accurately as we can see it in a smile on their face.
At the moment, the app only works with Adidas miCoach, Basis fitness tracker, and some other models, but not yet with Fitbit or Jawbone.
A recent survey has revealed that while most wearables owners find functions such as step counting and heart rate monitoring useful, they would like their wearable to monitor other health functions. Topping the wish-list are wearables that can measure stress levels (cited by 55% of those surveyed). As soon as wearables start offering better tools than step-counting, we will see more adoption and use.
Rather than diversifying resources into both hardware and software development, Sensora has decided to focus on the software aspect. Which makes perfect sense.
The importance of this technology is undeniable. Sensaura is hoping to pursue partnerships with device manufacturers, so that one day in the not too distant future, emotion sensing becomes a standard feature of your fitness tracker.
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