Apple Preaparing To Enter The Health Accessory Market

We have a few hints according to which Apple is making improvements to the pedometer accuracy in order to enter at some point the health accessory market.  One of these hints are represented by the three patent fillings, published last Thursday under the authority of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The patent fillings initiated by the Apple company, don’t specify the final purpose of their usage but we believe that the technology described in Techniques for improved pedometer readings ( as the patents are called) could be applied to any wearable device. Even though the company didn’t apply this kind of technology to any of their products so far, it is quite peculiar that they initiated three patents which describe three individual techniques for pedometer logging.

Besides, every patent seems to be treating the same issue, and that is the accuracy of a pedometer. The gadgets used at this moment for counting someone’s steps aren’t fully accurate, not even those created with  this exact purpose, because the software or the hardware used in the product have various limitations. The invention Apple brought, is intended to correct these limitations, through an intelligent process of collecting, and a more accurate way to interpret the data.

Every patent filled by Apple, begins with a description of a device that has the capacity to detect motion, something like an incorporated gyroscope or an accelereometer, a system which is able to render the traveled distance, running step counts, step count and other measurements. Besides, in some parts of the device’s description, it is highlighted that the system will be available not only for step detection devices, but also for smartphones and other similar gadgets.

Traditional ways use for step detection acceleration swing over a steady edge, but Apple used for their invention frequency filtering and an adjustable threshold to gather more precise results. An analysis of the frequency, can involve FFT (fast Fourier transform) or other various algorithms, as the distance calibration could apply the K-factor, least squares multiple or simple regression.

Below, you can see an image extracted from one of the patent.

Image courtesy of Apple Insider

The illustration describes how, the data can be misinterpreted when using the steady threshold, due to modifications or offsets in the accelerometer. During running measurements, the passing from a negative slope to a positive slope could get away undetected. So while certain peaks could correspond, for example to a right step or to a left step, a traditional technique of filtering would only be able to detect one step, because of the absence of a transition from negative peaks to positive peaks.

This kind of approach permits the insertion of supplementary information about the user’s physical capacities, and can interpret better changes in the pace. At this level a GUI can be incorporated, and the user would be able to insert data about his height, weight and other capacities in order to be calculated in the chosen algorithms.

With these superior approach, the assessment of the user’s movement is more accurate, thus the pedomeer can generate  much more precise information.

The applications describe in detail the implementations of the adjustable threshold and the algorithms used, as well as the frequency filtering.

So far, the pedometer software created for collecting data from the iPhone’s sensors in order to track the user’s steps and the traveled distance was created by third-party app developers, and we can’t wait for Apple to launch its own app of this kind. Apple’s invention is trying to reform some of the conventional techniques, meaning that they are getting ready to use this technology in creating a pedometer application. Or maybe this tech will be used in their soon to come iWatch device.

The patent fillings credit for these inventions Vinay Bethgiri Ganesh Dixit, Saurabh Gupta and Yash Rohit Modi as developers of these techniques, and all the applications were submitted in September 2011.