Connected Wearables Part I

Here are some real and fanciful products in the wearable space. See if you can determine which are real and actually in production and which are still figments of someone’s imagination. In Part II we will indicate those that are actual tangible products and those that are not.

HeadSafe: A personal reusable helmet with built-in airbag protection for athletes engaging in sports that have high concussion risks. The helmet is fitted with sensors that are in turn linked to sensors associated with all the other athletes (and umpires too) on the field of play, the field itself plus any other object that could cause harm to the athlete if he or she collides with such object. All of these sensors feed realtime data to a cloud based engine that constantly computes the chances of each individual athlete being part of a concussive incident. When that chance passes a certain threshold it activates the airbag in the helmet to cushion the head just prior to impact. Target customers include extremely wealthy sport industries who will spare no expense to ensure that their plans for world domination are not impeded by health concerns.

WholehouseBubble: Bio-implanted sensors for customers are linked with objects/events in the home and are used to measure emotional response to visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory etc cues; it optimizes the production/timing/duration/frequency of the various sources of such cues to attain emotional nirvana. The sources of such cues can include the organic e.g., your spouse, other residents and the in-organic e.g., TV shows, foods, the actual physical objects in the house. Target market includes high new worth individuals who subscribe to the quantified self philosophy and believe there is a better way to remedy emotional issues they have.

TrackMyLuggage: This service allows you to register your luggage and use your smartphone to monitor in real-time your hard-won property as you travel the world. You are given a 3D POV of your luggage navigating the miles of conveyer belts and underground passageways in each airport. You can also see it nestled safely in the belly of your airplane as you ride the skies. Targeted at airlines who want to cement loyalty and retain consumers. Who hasn’t been a little paranoid about losing their luggage? Besides, it should be amusing to visually compare and compete with your fellow travelers to see whose luggage will show up first in Baggage pickup.

UVMagicLight: a tattoo or removable patch that is able to measure UV rays and thus tell you when you have been spending too much time out in the sun. The patch is bundled with a smartphone based support system to advice and prompt you on the preventative and palliative ways you can reduce your risk of overexposure and the ills that come with it e.g., skin cancer. This is targeted at those who like the sun but burn easily.

BrainBoost: Performance brain training to maintain focus, manage stress and be at your very best. A combination of brain sensing headgear, smartphone app and big data computations around brain performance. Using the headgear you can train your brain to do better in your area of focus and you can compare your performance to others; the product uses neurofeedback to provide visual realtime cues of your brain activity in order to help with training and self-regulation. Targeted at the 1% who are paranoid about staying in the 1%!

YourBeautyMask: a personalized 3D mask packed with sensors that measure a vast number of skin attributes such as moisture, temperature etc. It has the ability to warm up your face and improve the performance of beauty products you use. It is linked to a smartphone app that is programmed to measure the efficacy of skin regimens and provides tips for avoiding the bad habits and stress that can ruin your face. Targeted at those who want to stay beautiful forever.

These real (and not so real!) products show the wide range of connected wearables that are or could be available in the marketplace soon. As always, the technology will get ahead of the market in some cases but eventually we should expect to see some really good examples of product/market fit.