Undoubtedly most of us have a speaker like Amazon Alexa at home. And if it's not her then there is Google Assistant. In short, every company in a few years will have its own personal assistant and we will be able to do some things as we could not before. Also measure heart rate. A team of researchers fromUniversity of Washington has greatly expanded the potential and applications of speakers with integrated AI. Now these can be used not only for listening to music and controlling household appliances, but also to monitor heart rate.
You would never have said "Alexa, measure my heartbeat" and instead it will be possible in the future: research proves it
Previously, Chinese scientists had already suggested to use smart speakers as heart rate sensors using reflected sound waves. However, their experiments reported extremely low measurement accuracy. But the University of Washington researchers have solved this problem and they are also ready to provide manufacturers with a fully functional algorithm.
The new algorithm is based onself-directed machine learning e learns constantly and in real time, rather than from preset updates. The system combines signals from multiple speaker microphones to detect a heartbeat signal. According to the researchers, this method is similar to how the virtual assistant picks up the user's voice, even if you hear background sounds or someone else is talking at the same time. Will it therefore be possible to use Alexa or Google Assistant for this purpose? We do not know if this technology will be integrated into existing devices, but we assume so.
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Source: Mark Stone / University of Washington
In clinical studies, theeffectiveness of the new algorithm was confirmed on 26 patients and the spread of values was 30 milliseconds versus 28 milliseconds compared to conventional medical equipment. Heartbeat recognition via the smart speaker is also possible up to one distance of 60cm.
Source | UW News
