Nutrition-Tracking Wristband Monitors Calories, Carbs & Protein
AIRO bracelet can determine the makeup of the food you've eaten recently and track stress and sleep.
Keeping track of exercise, sleep and stress levels is nothing remarkable for wearable technology, but now it would seem there is one that can also keep track of how much you’ve been eating. The AIRO Wristband uses tiny LEDs on the wristband’s underside to detect metabolites in the bloodstream, which means it can even break down the nutritional intake of your food.
The wristband is able to parse the nutritional value of food into protein, fat and carbohydrates, which can then be sent to an accompanying app. It can’t tell the difference between simple and complex carbohydrates yet, but the company continues to experiment and is confident they can come up with something. Abhilash Jayakumar, co-founder and CEO of Airo Heath, told Engadget how the device is able to recognize different light properties unique to various nutrients:
As your body breaks the food down, the sensor can detect the amount of light that passes through the blood based on green, red and infrared patterns.
Apart from food intake, AIRO can monitor stress using your heart rate, and vibrates when it thinks your stress levels are a little bit too high, giving you a gentle reminder to calm down. Exercise mode also takes your heart rate into account, as it measures workout intensity along with counting steps and calories burned. This combination of factors allows the device to know when you’re exercising and when you’re just a little bit overexcited. Sleep mode relies on your nervous system to figure out if you are a light or heavy sleeper, and will vibrate at the best time for you to wake up.
The accompanying app for the device is planned to offer actionable advice, giving you clear steps for how to improve your sleep, reduce your sleep, or get higher-quality exercise. This would set it apart from other devices that simply provide cold, hard numbers and expect you to figure out the rest. AIRO won’t be available until Fall 2014 but if you like the sound of the device already, you can preorder one of them for an earlybird price of $149 before it goes up to the normal retail price of $199.