For Drivers and Students, This Headband Measures Your Brain Activity and Wakes You Up via Call or Tweet
BARCELONA, Spain –– Nodding off at work? All of your friends and family are about to be notified.
The U-Wake is a headband worn over the forehead that can measure fatigue by reading your brainwave activity. If it senses that you’re nodding, or about to fall asleep, the headband can play a sound on your phone to wake you up, or, if you’re intense enough, it can text all of your family and friends, or post a status to your Facebook or Twitter account. (No, it doesn’t shock you. “Too distracting,” a U-Wake representative told me.)
I tried the U-Wake here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The band fits snugly on the forehead and includes a clip for the earlobe, which is quite uncomfortable and reminds me of wearing a particularly strong clip-on earring. (Don’t ask). It also clips onto your shirt in a second place so that the sensor remains in place and can get an accurate reading.
A big display on the connected app gives you a fatigue score between 0 and 100, with 100 being the top-level of fatigue.
The U-Wake wasn’t able to read my brain activity, apparently due to the loud noise on the show floor. It was able to read a U-Wake employee’s brain activity quite easily, however.
Perhaps his brain was more active than mine. I hadn’t had my morning coffee yet.
"Hey, it’s Jason, and I’m in a really boring meeting. Zzzzz"
The U-Wake is primarily aimed at truck drivers and civilian drivers with long commutes, as a way to prevent drowsy driving incidents. It might also prove useful, in a more low-stakes environment, for students, workers, or people attending your wedding.
When your brainwave activity gets too low, chimes on your phone go off and it begins to vibrate on the strongest setting, rousing you back to attention. Or it can notify anyone of your choosing –– your wife, your boss, the bride & groom, whoever, so that they can call you and make sure you’re alert.
"I found your wedding boring. Love, Jason"
The U-Wake is a fine idea, and maybe even a life-saving one. We’ve seen proposals for advanced technology that prevents drowsy driving incidents from several different companies; the problem has been attacked from many different directions, from in-car solutions that let the automobile take over when the driver begins to drift, to headbands like this one.
At this stage, the founders of U-Wake need to come up with a more comfortable version that doesn’t pinch the ear and that doesn’t look quite so cyborgian on the face. They also need to find a market: A recent Kickstarter campaign raised a little more than $2,000, out of a goal of $200,000.
I’m highlighting the U-Wake here at the Mobile World Congress because the impulse is solid and the impact could be real. There are plenty of companies here that are sanding the edges on smartphones and spewing out new messaging apps and minimally improving existing storage options.
This is a company that is using the computers in our pocket, and emerging brainwave-reading technology, in an attempt to solve an actual, high-risk problem in modern society. That’s reason enough not to sleep on the U-Wake.
