Just like dry-land athletes, swimmers can benefit from monitoring their performance and vital signs while training. The iSwimWeaR device is designed to let them do so – plus it may even help keep them from drowning.
Developed at Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), iSwimWeaR will officially debut next week at CES.
The device clips onto the head strap of a third-party set of googles, where it sits against one temple. Utilizing what ITRI simply describes as "low-power microwave sensing technology," it proceeds to monitor the wearer's heart rate, respiration rate and physical activity level – all with a claimed 95% rate of accuracy.
An IMU (inertial measurement unit) in the device additionally tracks the swimmer's body position in the water, reportedly allowing it to ascertain stroke frequency, stroke width, oblique angles and swimming speed. All of the monitored data is transmitted via Bluetooth to an app on the user's smartphone, where it's recorded for subsequent analysis.
That said, if the user's heart rate or respiration rate drops too low, a drowning-warning alert is transmitted to the phone of a coach or other person who may be able to provide assistance. The swimmer is also alerted in real time via an illuminated LED at one edge of their visual field, which switches from green to red.
There's currently no word on when iSwimWeaR will be available, or at what price. For now, you can see a demonstration of its features in the video below. And if you don't want to wait, you might want to check out the somewhat similar Athlos Live, Triton 2 and Form systems.
Source: ITRI
