At Mobile Marketing were proud to help tech companies showcase their cutting-edge solutions, whether its on our website, in our magazine or at our Mobile Marketing Summits. Giving a platform to companies that are breaking new ground in their market brings audiences one step closer to the ideas and developments that will shape tomorrow. In that spirit, our Innovation Lab feature takes a step beyond the world of apps, ads and handsets with slightly bigger screens, in order to share some of the tech worlds innovative ideas.

This week, we have a slightly more grounded Internet of Things special as David Murphy picks up the mantle for one week only to showcase some of the companies he met at last week’s IoT Forum in Cambridge who have dreams of changing the world, or at least one small part of it, with their tech…

XMetrics Tracker Offers More Accurate Training Data for Swimmers
Over the past couple of years, fitness trackers have become part and parcel of everyday life for millions of people, enabling us to keep track of how far we have walked, run or cycled, and how many calories weve burned in the process. One group of people, however, has been poorly catered for by the current crop of fitness trackers – the world’s 120m swimmers. This, at least, is the contention of XMetrics, a company formed by a group of swimming enthusiasts to create a dedicated swimming fitness tracker of the same name.

The company is headed up by Andrea Rinaldo, XMetrics CEO, former professional swimmer and former coach. Last year, the company engaged the services of Massimiliano Rosolino to use the tracker and provide the first testimonial and feed back on product improvements he thought were needed.

Rosolino certainly has some swimming credentials, having taken the gold medal in the 200m individual medley at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Indeed, his Wikipedia entry names him as the most successful athlete in the history of Italian swimming, with an overall count of 60 international medals.

Yes, the company concedes, there are other swimming fitness trackers out there, but they are tweaks of regular fitness trackers, designed to be worn on the wrist, which will not give the most accurate data. To decide how its tracker should be worn, XMetrics conducted extensive research, and found that the back of the head was the best position to deliver the most accurate biometric data, with no interference.

The Xmetrics tracker is waterproof to 1m. It records data and, thanks to a pair of earbuds, provides audio feedback in real-time to the swimmer on a number of different parameters, such as the number of laps swum; time swimming; and split time, as well as stroke frequency It also records data relating to speed, stroke count per lap and calories burned.

It comes in two versions, the XMetrics FIT, aimed at amateur swimmers, which sells for £149.99, and the PRO, aimed at professional swimmers, priced at £219.99, both of which have a companion iPhone and Android app.
Support for Windows phones is planned for the future, but smartwatches and other fitness trackers are not supported. The company has had $1m seed funding to date and sold “a few hundred” units in 2015. In addition to swimming, it also has its sights set on a triathlon version. In fact, the company says, it is already in use by triathletes, but the addition of GPS capabilities in the near future will enable it to be used also in open water.

FlowCity Uses Advertising to Drive Footfall and Ease Peak-time Commuter Congestion
FlowCity is a programmatic advertising solution designed to drive footfall into retail shopping and eating outlets. That might not sound too groundbreaking, but the way it works is certainly innovative, relying on real-time big data processing and AI advertising automation to deliver footfall increases.

It’s currently deployed in Canary Wharf in London, where insight into hyperlocal crowds is garnered from the gathering and real-time processing of weather and transportation data, CCTV footage and social media contexts, to enable advertisers to decide when it’s most appropriate to advertise to those crowds via 40 shopping mall digital screens; 11 screens on three office floors of the One Canada Square office block, housing 9, 000 office; digital taxi tops, and apps, using Trinity Mirror’s PinPoint platform to geo-target app users in the Canary Wharf area.

At the IOT Forum last week, the company explained how the Canary Wharf deployment helps reduce congestion on the public transport system at peak times. By targeting ads at Canary Wharf workers each working day just before 6 as they leave their offices in their thousands, FlowCity helps to drive traffic into retail outlets, while at the same time relieving the peak-time footfall burden on the transportation system. Everyone in the same area sees the same ad, with ads targeted by location and time for the digital screens, and similarly in the app, using geofencing to serve one ad to everyone using the app in one part of Canary Wharfm and a different one to other people in another part of the complex.

The Canary Wharf deployment is sponsored by Canary Wharf Group, which owns almost 100 acres of property at Canary Wharf, but FlowCity says that Transport for London is very keen to support the solution and is actively looking at ways it can use the data FlowCity delivers to improve the commuting experience for workers.

Audio Analytic Uses Sound to Monitor Your Home
There are an increasing number of home monitoring solutions on the market, most relying on a connected camera or cameras, the feed from which the owner can tap into via a companion app on their smartphone.

Audio Analytic takes a different approach, using, surprise surprise, audio as the key to trigger an alert. The company has developed patented AI technology in the form of software sensors that can recognise certain sounds in order to trigger an alert on the home-owners’ phones.

Its  currently available with three sensors – a crying baby; window glass breaking (suggesting a burglary); and the sound put out by smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. What’s impressive about the company is the level of detail is has gone to in order to reduce the possibility of false positives. For the smoke/carbon monoxide alarm trigger, it indexed every such alarm in the US, UK and Asia. For the sound of window breaking glass, it took warehouses full of glass panels of different shapes, sizes, thicknesses and designs and smashed every one of them, recording the sound each made in the process, in order to be able to recognise the sound of breaking window glass in the wild.

Going forward, the company says it’s planning more innovative products that raise the sound recognition bar even further in keeping smart home owners secure, informed and entertained.

Audio Analytic licenses its software to companies selling devices in the Smart Home market. Its customers include Cisco, Swann and Sengled, who deploy its software on their devices that are then sold online and in major retail stores across the US, the EU and Australia.

Sansible Wearables Feel the Force
Performance data has been playing a big part in improving the performance of professional and amateur sportsmen and women alike for several years now, but according to the founders of Sansible Wearables, one crucial data point has been missing – force.

The company notes out that when two rugby or American football players crash into each other, the impact is like being hit by a car travelling at 30mph, and the ability to measure the force of impact in these ‘collision events’ can help professional sports teams devise better training programmes; assess the impact of any injuries sustained; and work out a more detailed and accurate recovery program.

The key to Sansible’s offering is its Live Skin. This is a connected membrane built into the player’s sports kit that collects the data during collision events for later analysis. The company says it’s not at liberty to disclose “the clever part about how it works” but says that what makes it different is the ability to sense a high amount of force accurately, and also on individual body parts. For example, different measurements of the force exerted by each of the shoulders. As such, it enables coaches to monitor training, analyse players’ strength and technique, track their statistics across high energy cost events, and recognise abnormal patterns.

Sansible is working with rugby teams to develop a prototype and hopes to roll out a fully working solution next year.

SimPrints Fingerprint Scanner Brings Digital Health Records to the Unconnected
Over 2bn people worldwide lack any kind of formal means of identification, which means they can’t access public services such as healthcare and finance. SimPrints’ solution is a mobile fingerprint scanner that connects to a mobile phone to enable service providers to identify people and link directly to their electronic medical records.

The fingerprint is scanned on a small scanner, powered by an ARM processor. The image is then transferred to the phone via Bluetooth and run through a matching algorithm to tie the fingerprint to the patient and display their medical history on the phone. SimPrints uses a dedicated scanner, as the ones built into mobile phones are typically not rugged enough to be used in the dry, hot, humid environments where its technology is most needed.

The company has so far raised £1m in grants and donations over the past 18 months, with ARM and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation among the donors. It is due to go into manufacture and its first full deployment this year, following extensive testing using 3D-printed scanners in Bangladesh, Sudan, Benin and Kenya.

During 2016, it says it will improve healthcare via fingerprint scanning for 55,000 people. Ultimately, the company’s aim is to become a global Tech for Good player, developing biometrics for use in healthcare and education, as well as other devices and sensors.