Category: Health + Fitness

If you can’t afford a table tennis coach but a wall isn’t good enough for you, check out the Trainerbot. It’s a smart ping pong ball launcher that will give you the exact shot you want for as long as you want.

In competitive running, pacers are hired runners who run at a pre-determined speed – and therefore time – so that the contestants can gauge their own pace or be motivated to run faster. To push its sponsored runners during training, Puma made Beatbot, a robotic pacer.

While I can’t speak from direct experience, period pains can be pretty terrible. That said, we guys feel the pain too, since the ladies often give us hell when Aunt Flo is visiting. Some women take painkillers to deal with it, but maybe there is a better way.

Being a child of the ’80s, you might expect I could roller skate with the best of them. Roller-skating was a big deal back then, and many a birthday party for friends and myself happened at the Skateplex.

Bento Bioworks claims it has created a compact and relatively affordable device that incorporates the machines you’ll need to prepare and analyze DNA samples on the go. The Bento Lab is meant for professionals and enthusiasts, but there will be a starter kit for newbies as well.

These days, you can have a breathalyzer installed in your car, but someday the life-saving device may be able to warn you while you’re still at the party. Honda and Hitachi say they’re working on a breathalyzer that’s compact enough to be integrated into a car’s smart key.

My mother is diabetic and while she has to prick her fingers multiple times per day to check glucose levels, she doesn’t have to give herself injections. For the numerous diabetics out there that have to prick fingers and give themselves insulin shots, diabetes can be a big pain.

Astronauts have to work out for at least two hours per day or they can experience muscle or bone density loss. I can only assume not working out for a few days means that their bodies will quit on them in the exact way that Rigby’s did in that episode of Regular Show where he refused to eat a salad.

Over the course of my career, I’ve worked in a number of different office environments, from stodgy blue suit organizations, to hip startups. Now I work for myself, out of my own home office. But over the years, I’ve come to find a number of things that I think can encourage office productivity and workplace satisfaction.

The lenses in prescription eyeglasses are usually tailored to the wearer’s vision. There are also multifocal or progressive lenses that provide different focal powers, but each power is confined to portions of the lens. That’s why a company called Deep Optics is working on a pair of electronic eyeglasses that automatically change the entire lens’ focal power based on where the wearer is looking.

Do you like to jump rope as part of your exercise routine? Let me introduce you to Tangram Factory’s Smart Rope, a jump rope with 23 LEDs embedded in the middle of the rope that light up in front of you to display your current jump count while you’re jumping, courtesy of the old persistence of vision effect.

There are many exoskeletons in development around the world. While the goal of some is to make your average human able to lift and carry more, the goal for others is to help people who are paralyzed to walk again.

When I was in college, I watched a bunch of different surgeries being performed in the operating room. The thing that sticks out in my mind is just how long doctors have to spend standing in one single location, without moving.

Quitting smoking can be one of the hardest things you will ever do. Fortunately, French company RegulSmoke has unveiled a new smart device at CES 2016 called Smoking-Stopper. This connected device and mobile app tracks smoking behavior and controls consumption in real-time, which is said to help you ultimately kick the habit.

Sadly, Derby the dog was born with a deformity that left him without the ability to walk without some sort of assistance. Derby had an initial set of 3D printed prosthetics that allowed him to get around, but weren’t perfect.

The smart man knows a bandage only hides his wounds. And University of Bath Professor Toby Jenkins is a very smart man. That’s why he and his colleagues from various UK universities and hospitals are working on a bandage that glows under ultraviolet light when exposed to toxins produced by pathogenic bacteria.