Embrace is a wearable device of the company Empatica a company in Cambridge, Mass., focused on measuring human data. It can look like a normal fitness trackers but has a complete different story.
Embrace do not just measure steps and reps but it gathers medical-quality data that can help its wearers to detect unexpected seizures. This innovative device measures its wearers stress level by tracking the electrodermal activity of the skin (EDA).
EDA is a measurement of the skin’s conductance; as humans get excited or stressed, the amount of sweat on their skin fluctuates. The Embrace’s sensors are able to track little changes in skin conductance and communicate via vibrations when the wearer is experiencing higher than normal levels of stress.
For example, you can set the Embrace to vibrate gently when your stress level starts rising, giving you the opportunity to take action before it gets too high, or when you reach activity targets during the day or during your workout.
The Embrace is the end product in a long road of development started at the MIT Media Lab by Rosalind Picard and her team. They were interested in developing sensors that could quantify emotions, in particular the emotions of people with non-verbal autism. She first developed the iCalm and during a trial, they discovered that the sensors were able to detect seizures. The next step after this huge news was to develop a wearable bracelet that could gather that data daily and help people who suffer for epilepsy. Here is where Empatica takes place. Rosalind Picard partnered with Matteo Lai (CEO of Empatica) and started to work.
Lai and his team of designer had to face a biggest challenge: make the device appealing. “If you don’t wear it, it can’t save your life” . Embrace needed to look not like a medical device but like something you might find on shelves at the apple Store. They ended up with a very minimalist look, with a slap bracelet strap and a tiny, low-profile square that contains the sensors. There’s no touch interface, just a circle that lights up to tell you the time and communicate stress levels.
The Embrace App is where most of the contents are communicated. If you are in danger and need help the app will immediately notificate you emergency contact. According to the Institute of Medicine, one in 26 people in the US will suffer from epilepsy at some point in their life, Embrace can help them monitoring their condition to live a better life.
Take a look to their crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
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