Two former Israel Air Force pilots, both passionate athletes, already devised a bio-sensing technology embedded in headgear to measure vital signs. Now, the smart sensors that power their LifeBEAM line of sport caps, visors, and helmets are going into Samsung’s future Simband platform for wearable devices to measure heart rate, blood flow, sweat production, calories burned, skin temperature, and other fitness parameters.
The idea is to provide a broad spectrum of precision monitoring without weighing down the athlete.
“Chest straps are really uncomfortable, so we’ve taken the technology and put it in an existing wearable,” LifeBEAM marketing manager Cid Carver explains.“You’re already wearing a helmet when you cycle. When you’re running, you already need a hat or visor.”
LifeBEAM’s first product, a smart bicycle helmet ($229), was funded by an Indiegogo crowdsourcing campaign and went on sale in September last year, followed by the fitness caps and visors ($99).They’re available from LifeBEAM’s ecommerce platform and vendors all around the world.
The concept for LifeBEAM came from above, quite literally.
“LifeBEAM’s founders, Omri Yoffe and Zvika Orron, were Israel Air Force pilots who thought of this technology and implemented it for pilots’ helmets, and then realized it can be taken from aerospace to our space,” Carver tells ISRAEL21c.
“Our first mission was keeping jet pilots and astronauts safe as they pulled multiple G’s by sensing critical vitals like heart rate, SPO2, blood flow and physical activity during flight,” the founders explain on the company’s website.“The result: the world’s smallest, most accurate and versatile bio-sensors for motion-intensive activities.”
The headgear they designed relies on electro-optical technology to measure heart rate continuously. An optical sensor in the front reads the user’s forehead pulse and transmits a raw signal to the processing unit in the back. The processing unit analyzes the data and sends it to the user’s smartphone or other device. Other sensors in the products accomplish their job in a similar fashion. (via Israel 21c)
[Photo: PIXEL PLANET / YouTube ]