Category: Health + Fitness

There are smartphones, smartwatches, and smarthomes these days, so why not have a smartcup? That’s exactly what the HeyDo Cup is – an intelligent drinking vessel that helps keep you hydrated and healthy. The HeyDo Cup can remind you to drink on a regular basis, take your pills, and even monitor exactly how much liquid you’ve consumed.

Researchers from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) have created a very cool and very small exoskeleton that is intended to help kids who suffer from a condition called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) walk and stave off other illnesses that might risk their lives.

For people obsessed with their skin, there are special video cameras that can give you a good look at your blemishes. Prophix is a toothbrush that does the same thing, but with the inside of your mouth.

If you think about it, the super soldier serum that turned a wimpy little guy into Captain America is really nothing more than a permanent steroid shot (on steroids). You can’t get your own super serum to avoid the gym like Cap did, but you can build your guns the old-fashioned way by hitting the weights.

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.