It is a challenge to be able to define the best people within the wearable connected space; especially when the innovations appear faster than the mail in the mail box. To embrace this challenge in the best possible way we decided to select the most influential people in different sub categories. Let us know if you agree or disagree.
Fashion
First and foremost we would like to congratulate Zoli Kovacs and the Tago Arc Team for becoming the winner at our WT | Wearable Technology Innovation World Cup 2015/16. Zoli Kovacs and his team brought us an awesome smart jewelry which can easily match your mood and your clothing style without charging. If you are grumpy in the morning and you need something to cheer you up, change the bracelet’s display to a picture that makes you happy; if you are going out at night you can change the screen to a trendy pattern. With Tago Arc you can own endless design variables.
Secondly anyone who familiar with the fashion icon Iris Apfel from NYC, knows that this woman lives and breathes fashion. Therefore, the cooperation between Iris Apfel and WiseWears Gerry Wilmink debuted at CES 2016 for introducing a new era of timeless wearables. WiseWear brings smart sensing GPS technology with the use of Bluetooth signals through sleek metal. Moreover, the WiseWear can not only track fitness and receive mobile alerts, it is ideal for all ages because of its ability to send a distress signal to emergency contacts in case there is something wrong.
Billie Whitehouse is an aesthetic specialist who possesses a naturally inquisitive nature towards technology and innovation. As director and designer of We:eX, Billie is invigorating the fashion industry and transforming it into a business focused on improving the quality of our lives. That’s the reason why Nadi is the newest and soon to be the best Yoga pants on the market. Nadi is the picture perfect human/computer interaction pants. They are designed flawlessly to allow for complete flexibility, along with haptic feedback. Nadi has been described at the Yoga pants that are combined into a Yoga coach. They can sense your body’s movements and vibrate to assist you in gaining the best form. Billie designed the garment to conceal the technology seamlessly while still looks elegant. Additionally, if innovation is of your interest, we are coordinating with Whitehouse Institute for our next conference in Sydney (on May 10th).
Last but not least, meet Lisa Lang – another enthusiast in inspiring customers to embrace the magic of technology and help them combine it with the beauty of design. She is the founder and CEO of ElektroCouture which is the first agency to pioneer innovative electronic wearable technology for the fashion industry. Her mission to wearable industry is to bring old technology in the new context.
Healthcare
In our recent conference in Munich on 26th January, we welcomed on stage Sonia Sousa– the founder of Kenzenwear. She gave the WT ecosystem the world’s first wireless smart patch for anytime health and performance monitoring. She created a new method to influence our body control. The Kenzen ECHO is a small and flexible patch that helps you better understand your physiology. It provides you with personalized health insights and notifications to help improve performance, recovery and prevent injury.
The Fantastic 4 : Sharon, Jared, Ran and Prinson from Healthcare Originals change the situation for people who suffer asthma. They brought their latest product, ADAMM, to our WT Innovation World Cup. ADAMM is an intelligent asthma management with three-part solutions. It is specifically in the form of a wearable to detect precursor symptoms of asthma, combined with a smartphone app for the basic management plan and lastly connected to a web portal to detect the treatment.
Sports & Fitness
One of the most influential people creating innovation with wearables within the sports and fitness category this year is Benoit Mariani with his product Run Up. Run Up is an advanced wearable motion analysis product for sports and medicine. It provides clinical grade analysis of running mechanics without calibration. Additionally, it helps athletes to reach peak performance on top of providing trainers and therapists with data analytics, in order to examine historic trends or injury warnings.
Fitbit Blaze was announced at CES 2016 as an awesome fitness watch. It’s a secret weapon by James Park, CEO of Fitbit, to compete with the smart watch. It not only includes functions of a fitness tracker but also it can connect to your favorite music lists and set off alarms whenever you have a call or message. It cannot be denied that James Park leads the Fitbit fitness tracker market in 2015 and plans to continue in 2016.
Display and Augmented Reality
Brendan Iribe is known as one of the video game industry’s most successful entrepreneurs, thus is no surprise that he is now the CEO of Oculus VR. Brendan Iribe brings Oculus Rift to reality in more ways than one. Oculus VR is a turning point for the game industry by opening virtual worlds into complete immersion. Oculus Rift provides different experiences from other VR headsets by including hand controllers and easy to use heads-up-display. This makes VR diverse because you can do multiple activities: stepping into your favorite game, watching a movie, traveling to world or spending time with your friends. Whatever activity you fancy will give you the feeling that you are really there.
There are two big guys standing out in the augment realitz headset industry. They are John Haddick from ODG and Tero Aaltonen from Augmenta. They are changing the world of computing for labor workers with the all new ODG augmented reality smart glass with Augmenta software. The glass places a small display in the center and near the face of one’s field of vison. The 720p display on ODG’s glass is actually two displays (one for each eye) that combined into 1 screen when looking at your hand in front of your face. This covers a much higher portion of your sight lines. Since it projects a slightly different image to each eye, it can employ stereoscopic 3D. Augmenta created a software that will teach labor workers how to preform different task. They can put their hand in front of their face and control the actions by waving their fingers, swinging their wrist or flashing the hand up. Augmenta is not the only company that has partnered with ODG because of the comfortability and versatility of the glasses, they can be incorporated with technology to assist with any industry.
Wearable Payments
What makes Philip Campbell become the most influential man in wearable payments industry? There are times when carrying a wallet or a purse is impractical and uncomfortable. You disagree? Ask joggers, cyclists or suffers how they would prefer to carrier their money. Therefore Mr. Campbell provided a solution with Kerv. It is a contactless payment ring which allows you to make payment anywhere in the world without card, PIN, signature, bank account or smartphone. Moreover, the ring doesn’t require for charging. It’s secure so you don’t have to worry about your money being stolen if you misplace the ring.
WT knows that 2016 will begin a new awareness of wearables within the vast technological world. Let us see within the next 11 months if these innovations mention above will prove even more useful than expected. To see any of these world wide leaders in perosn, sign up to attend one of many international conferences for 2016.
