In support of ARM Wearables Week, I browsed Kickstarter for active ARM-based wearable campaigns and it wasn't hard to find one that was using one of our ARM Partner's technology. Below is the second (here are the others Pip, a GPS and activity tracker for dogs and cats and SensoTRACK, Wearable Biometric Earphones for Fitness and Health) crowdfunding wearable project I will be featuring this week.
But, are you walking right?
ZIKTO is taking the wearable fitness tracker to the next level with their new Kickstarter project, Arki. Many of us today (some might not admit to it or are even aware of it) have bad walking habits during our daily activities. Arki focuses on the quality of your walking behavior to ensure you walk better and more balanced. The band's technology analyzes the size of your swing arcs, rhythm and its frequencies to detect your habits and will gently vibrate if it detects bad posture.
Besides it being your personal walking coach and fitness tracker (steps, calories, sleeping patterns), the smarts in the band will utilize your unique walking pattern and can be used as a biometric authentication so you can unlock your personal gadgets and control your smart home devices. Their Kickstarter page uses the Nest thermostat as an example - once Arki detects you sleeping, your smart thermostat will turn down to your ideal temperature. This is an example of what we all ultimately hope IoT solutions will one day do for us, by having all of our smart devices communicating to one and another to make our lives easier.
Like many of the wearable bands on the market today, the smarts are not in the actual band itself. Arki understands this and has created it to be a fashion accessory by giving you the ability to interchange the straps - even creating a partnership with MOREE, a 100% handmade thread bracelet which will appeal to a much larger audience.
Arki is looking for your help to bring them to market - they have raised nearly $80,000 of their $100,000 Kickstarter campaign goal with a bit more than a month to go. You can be one of the first to own an Arki for a $99 pledge.
I had the opportunity to pick the brain of Shawn Kim, their Co-Founder and CTO.
Developer Background:
Bio-mechanics engineer. I’ve created a mathematical model for humans walking, which machines can understand. Prior, I worked at SK Telecom in South Korea, and developed B2B security solutions.
Favorite wearable?
Arki of course!
Tech Inside:
Arki adapts a six-axis motion sensor (3-axis gyroscope and 3-axis accelerometer) from InvenSense that analyzes your arm swing patterns while you are walking with machine learning technology from the firmware.
We have built a prototype with Atmel SAM4LS (ARM Cortex-M4), and Nordic's Bluetooth low energy solution.
Most challenging hurdle you had to overcome in creating Arki?
Power dissipation and size. Power dissipation is always the biggest issue in wearable devices. With the limited size of a battery, we carefully have to design our firmware not to waste the battery as much as possible.
Advice for a developer that would like to create a wearable product?
Your service/algorithm may not be complicated as you think, many ultra-low power microprocessors can handle the job instead of high-end DSPs. You have to precisely and carefully select a microprocessor and the ARM Cortex-M0 will gratefully do the job for you.
What's next for Arki?
Our next goal is have a more complicated engine to classify more behaviors, beyond walking.
To learn more or to become a backer of Arki, visit their Kickstarter campaign: Arki: Your Walking Coach by ZIKTO — Kickstarter
