Hyundai has announced—in Korean, on its Korean website—that it is working on an exoskeleton suit that it compares to Iron Man, and that is identical to Lt. Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) in Edge of Tomorrow. The exoskeleton is an upgrade of Hyundai’s lighter weight H-LEX (Hyundai Lifecaring ExoSkeleton) that was designed to assist seniors and disabled people with mobility problems. … [Read more...]
Pebble Updates Watches with Heart Rate Monitors
Pebble, the smartwatch pioneer, today announced big updates to its basic model and its more deluxe Time product. Both get design updates -- the Pebble 2 is thinner and the Time 2 gets a bigger and higher-res color screen -- but the big change is the addition of a heart rate monitor. Even given Pebble's roots as a notification device, the addition of the heart rate … [Read more...]
Fitbit Buys Coin’s Wearable Payments Tech
Fitbit's been trying for more than a year to get NFC payment technology into its products; we picked up a strong rumor a few months ago (which we were unable to adequately confirm) that Fitbit had built production quantities of a fitness tracker with payment tech but was unable to get it to work properly. Today comes news that Fitbit has bought the wearable payment tech … [Read more...]
Tata Group Develops Smart Watch For Its Own Enterprise Use
When you're as big as the Tata Group (and if you don't know about the company, you should read up on it), you can develop hardware products just for your own internal use. That's apparently what the company is doing with a piece of wristware building a safety watch for workers in several of its subsidiaries. The Economic Times of India reports that Tata CIO Gopichand … [Read more...]
Fitbit’s Road to Success Narrows
Wearable Tech Insider does not do stock or financial analysis, but Fitbit's 1Q results, released yesterday, said interesting things about the state of the company. Sales and earnings in the quarter beat analysts expectations, but the company's profit outlook for 2Q were a third to a half of what was expected. (Sales, however, were projected to be strong.) As a result, the … [Read more...]
Judge Tosses Jawbone Patents in Trade Fight with Fitbit
Remember that Jawbone and Fitbit were suing each other over patents and trade secrets and unfair hiring practices? Jawbone started the fight, but Fitbit's coming out better. A judge at the International Trade Commission yesterday tossed out Jawbone's patents, ruling that the company's patent on the very idea of gathering heath and sleep data is invalid. The ruling weakens … [Read more...]
Revolar: Personal Safety at Your Fingertip
Personal safety alarms have been around for a while in the form of whistles and loud audible alarms buttons, but they had a major flaw: you couldn’t be sure if there was anyone around to hear them, or whether the person who heard them would be someone who would help. Revolar’s button alarm, along with others such as ROAR for Good’s Athena, make sure that if you’re in trouble, … [Read more...]
Health Tech Companies Augmedix, BioBeats Announce Funding Rounds
Augmedix, a San Francisco-based EHR (electronic health record) company, has raised $17 million to incorporate Google Glass into its product, TechCrunch is reporting. Separately, BioBeats, which has a biometrics coaching app, says it's raised $2.25 million. Augmedix has an interesting model. A common complaint about AR visors in social situations is that they distract the … [Read more...]
A Rebooting Nokia Acquires Digital Health Pioneer Withings
Withings, the French digital health company best known for its Pop and Activé smartwatches and its connected scale, is being bought by Nokia for about €170 million, the companies said this morning. Withings will be the basis for a Nokia Digital Health business, and the deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year. Nokia, of course, was far and away the … [Read more...]
Newest ASUS ROG Gaming Unit Strikes Up the Band
ASUS Republic of Gamers has announced its newest gaming unit, the ASUS ROG GT51CA, and it is reputed to be a king-of-the-jungle beast. It’s faster—well, that goes without saying in the gaming world—with 6th generation Intel Core i7 processor you can overclock to 4.6gHz (no rebooting), can take up two 2 Titan X graphics cards, so great resolution, has a cooling system for the … [Read more...]