Last Updated | March 20, 2024
The Revolution of IoT Wearables – Complete Guide for IoT in Wearables
There was a time when digital watches and pedometers were the raves in wearable technology—that was a long time ago. Technology has come a long way since then, with the Internet of Things (IoT) playing a significant role. This technological revolution has allowed us to connect wearable technology to a massive information network and many possibilities.
This article discusses how IoT and wearables work together to make wearables more intelligent and powerful. It talks about IoT wearables, the 5 top IoT devices, the challenges faced, and the future of this field. Stick around to the role of wearable tech gadgets and stick around the end because there is much to cover.
The IoT Revolution in Wearables – Detailed
IoT in Wearables has come a long way from their humble beginnings of telling time, counting steps, and showing notifications. With the advent of the Internet of Things, these devices have undergone a significant transformation. They have evolved into sophisticated computers we wear on our wrists or heads and even clip onto our clothes.
A few examples of the revolution in IoT wearables include:
Enhanced Functionality
Today’s fitness trackers are far from their predecessors, which merely counted steps. They can now measure heart rate and blood oxygen levels and even control smart home devices. These advanced wearables collect a wealth of data that can be leveraged to enhance patient treatment, showcasing the immense potential of IoT and wearables in healthcare.
Modern wearable technology includes several sensors that track various patient metrics. This data is subsequently transmitted for deeper analysis, improving healthcare providers’ quality.
Powerful Applications
Healthcare providers can use wearable technology to monitor chronic conditions, find potential issues, and provide feedback on workouts. For example, many smartwatches allow users to track workouts, monitor heart rate, and give progress reports in real-time.
Wearable IoT applications can also extend beyond health and work with smart homes to control them. They can control lights, doors, payments, and so much more. This was once something we saw in movies and TV shows, but it is now a reality.
Improved Day-To-Day Life
One of the reasons wearable technology is so effective is its convenience. Wearing a smartwatch around your wrist is effortless. It stays on your arm all day, tracking various metrics and notifications.
Wearable technology improves life by managing health better, significantly improving productivity, and allowing for a more interconnected lifestyle. Your wearable devices could rest on your finger (smart rings), wrist (smart watches), head (VR headset), and many others.
Key Applications of IoT Wearables
Seeing as the IoT and wearables complement each other so well, we should explore how they work together in the real world. While there are plenty to go around, we’ve picked the eight most important ones:
Health And Fitness Tracking
IoT wearables in healthcare track various health metrics, including heart rate, blood pressure, sleep cycle, and blood oxygen levels. They display this data in daily, weekly, and monthly formats so users can see how well they are doing. Wearable devices for health monitoring continue to be the most dominant way wearables are used.
Location And Navigation
With GPS capabilities, wearables do more than give directions. They track movements, provide real-time traffic updates, suggest alternate routes, and present recommendations. This means you don’t have to constantly look at your phone while driving or walking.
Augmented Reality
Smart glasses can comfortably sit on your nose while showing you relevant information. This could include workouts or vital signs when working out, notifications when walking around, and even educational material. The data overlaps the surroundings, allowing the two to blend seamlessly.
Communications
Modern IoT wearables come with built-in cellular connectivity and Bluetooth. You can connect them to your phone, tablet, or laptop to take calls, send messages, and even take video calls. This is a dream come true if you’re regularly on the go.
Environmental And Biometric Sensors
Wearables in IoT extend beyond basic fitness tracking. They include sensors to monitor air quality, UV exposure, and noise levels and offer significant environmental insight. You can track skin temperature and emotional state and conduct a sweat analysis. Not every feature works flawlessly, but with how things progress, it won’t be long before they do.
Location-Based Services
Using location-based features, wearables can also run specific prompts based on your location. For example, if it detects that you’ve left your home, it could turn off the lights and heavy appliances, lock the front door, or arm your security system. Once again, it comes to convenience and how much of it is possible.
Payments And Transactions
First, it was paper currency, then plastic, and now it is wearables. You no longer need to carry cash or cards because smartwatches with NFC can be used to pay at POS terminals. This eliminates the need for a bulky wallet with several cards and notes of cash.
Work And Productivity
Wearables can take notes, record voice messages, get reminders, set reminders, and boost overall productivity. Installing alerts on your wrist lets you stay on top of your game, ensuring productivity improves.
Top 5 Iot Wearables Devices in 2024
You must be wondering how all these applications can be used in the real world. To expound on this, here are the top five IoT wearables devices for 2024:
Health And Fitness Trackers
These devices greatly monitor heart rate, sleep patterns, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, and stress levels. This is possible thanks to several sensors and IoT connectivity that generate various pieces of data. This data can be used for tailored fitness plans and even catch potential health issues earlier.
Smart Belts
A smart belt does much more than keep your pants at your waist. It uses several sensors to track posture, waist size, and different forms of physical activity. The data generated can be used to improve posture, prevent potential injuries, and help with weight management. Certain smart belts may also have a heating feature to help with back pain.
Gaming Armbands
While it may be a more niche product, it is a smart wearable. Gaming armbands can track movement, heart rate, and muscle activity during gaming sessions. This lets you monitor your body and feel more immersed in your game, improving the overall gaming experience by several points.
Smart Shoes
A pair of smart shoes is very different from regular shoes. Several sensors analyze running form, overall gait, and even foot strikes. This data can be used to improve running technique, prevent potential injuries, and even find the right shoe for the future. Certain smart shoes can also adjust cushioning levels and tightness depending on the type of terrain you walk on.
Smart Rings
Smart rings are the most inconspicuous wearables. They sit comfortably on your finger, completely hiding all the sensors and functionality. A smart ring can track a user’s heart rate and sleeping patterns and make payments.
A smart ring can unlock your phone or front door, track stress levels, and pay for groceries. After smart watches, smart rings are some of the most compelling examples of IoT wearables healthcare.
Benefits of IoT in Wearables
If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve learned much about how the Internet of Things and wearable technology intertwine. IoT wearables can do everything from tracking steps to automating many parts of our lives.
The four main advantages of IoT-powered wearables are:
Health And Wellness
As previously mentioned, wearable technology is most commonly used to track various health metrics. These include heart rate, sleep quality, step count, blood oxygen, and stress levels. This data can be used to understand how good or bad a person’s health is. This sort of technology is beneficial to know how IoT used in telemedicine.
This data can be used to create custom exercise plans, share them with healthcare professionals, and catch certain diseases before they spread. It is generated in real-time and clearly shows your health. Thanks to these advancements, the future of wearable technology in healthcare is extremely promising.
Convenience
Wearables can be used to make payments, control your smart home, get and set reminders, and reduce the need to use your phone. This saves you time and energy while improving your productivity and efficiency.
IoT wearables also blend in as accessories you can wear with different outfits. This allows you to wear them more frequently, letting you get more use out of them than planned.
Security
Features such as fall detection for seniors and location tracking for children exemplify how smart wearables IoT help with security. With fall detection, a list of emergency contacts and services are immediately notified if the wearer falls over. With location tracking, parents can always know their children’s location in case they are someplace new.
These features may sound miniscule, but they can be life-saving if needed. Sometimes, they can even be the difference between life and death. Having them so readily available and easy to use is a blessing.
Productivity
Using wearable devices directly improves productivity. We’ve covered this earlier in this blog, but it’s essential to remind you how helpful wearables can be. They allow for automation and streamlined workflows to become the new norm.
There are many tools to improve your productivity, and wearables rank very high on that list. They provide immense value while seamlessly blending in with outfits and your general style.
Challenges and Considerations
While IoT-powered wearables have many benefits, we must also address their shortcomings. No technology is 100% ready to go from the start or for a long time.
The challenges with using IoT in wearables include:
Privacy And Data Security
The wearables we wear all day collect large amounts of data at any given time. Naturally, this raises concerns regarding their safety and security. It is crucial to ensure that said data is appropriately encrypted, securely stored, and only accessible to authorized individuals or departments.
Battery Concerns
All wearables are portable because they have batteries that are charged regularly. Some last longer than others but eventually require charging. With constant cellular or Bluetooth connectivity, battery life is always something to watch for. In recent times, modern chipsets have focused on both performance and efficiency. This creates a powerful wearable that also lasts longer on a single charge.
Compatibility Among Devices
Combining wearable technology and health is its most common use case. This has resulted in several manufacturers developing great products, services, and interfaces. However, a lack of standardization in the industry means you generally have to work with a single ecosystem to ensure smooth operations—an Apple Watch won’t work entirely with a Samsung Galaxy smartphone and vice versa.
Accuracy
The accuracy of the data gathered from wearables depends on various factors. This includes sensor limitations, environmental factors, and user behavior, to name a few. Results will always vary since there is no way to guarantee that a wearable is used in the ideal circumstance. Both hardware and software need to be upgraded to ensure robust accuracy.
Ethical Limitations
With wearable technology constantly monitoring several intimate pieces of information, specific ethical standards will be raised. Common reasons include employer surveillance, insurance companies using said data, and algorithm biases that prevent effective results. Clear guidelines need to ensure that data is protected and no ethical violations take place.
The Future of IoT in Wearables
The current state of IoT in wearables was once considered theoretical, but various innovations have brought it to life. Similarly, the future of wearable technology is something to look forward to. More specifically, there are five key trends to watch for in the future of IoT in wearables:
Integration With AI
Artificial intelligence continues to change the world as we know it, and wearables are no different. AI can be used to conduct a real-time analysis of your health data and provide an exercise plan or suggest better health management practices. The future of IoT wearables AI seems incredibly promising as things stand!
AI can be used to optimize battery life. Sensors can tell when the processor needs to slow down, display brightness needs to go down, and more. It can also predict your needs based on past trends and make suggestions accordingly.
Better Battery Life
Battery life can make or break a wearable. You can have a world-class product, but if you can’t use it for long periods without charging it, little value will be gained from it. We’ve seen a massive evolution in battery life in recent years, giving us hope.
How is battery life getting better? Manufacturers are using low-power processors and energy-efficient materials. The result is a more powerful device that uses less energy and doesn’t impact the environment as much. It is a win-win-win for battery life.
Improved Connectivity
IoT and wearable devices rely heavily on connectivity. Whether it is cellular, Bluetooth, or NFC, they need to be connected in one way or another. The future could be one where there is a centralized standard. This would let different devices from various manufacturers run different operating systems but communicate.
Examples of this idea include Internet of Things platforms that connect devices from different manufacturers. Users can then create automation in which various devices respond to one trigger. With 5G becoming more prevalent, the future of wearable connectivity seems bright and exciting.
Advancements In Health Monitoring
With so many wearables focusing on health metrics, we will see significant improvements with IoT in healthcare. Wearables will scan more than heart rates and blood pressure. They can measure blood sugar and flag symptoms for potential illnesses before they progress.
Wearables could also provide mental health insights, helping solve the world’s prevalent mental health crisis. Other IoT applications for wearables include using advanced biometrics and continuous monitoring on your wrist. This would completely change preventative healthcare and personalized treatments.
Enhanced Customization
Few feelings compare to having a product tailored to you. The future of wearable technology also includes significant advancements in customization. This includes tailor-made features and or recommendations based on specific needs.
Users can leverage AI to create custom workouts based on their fitness level, set medication reminders, or use sleep tracking to address particular sleep patterns. The beauty of customization is the many different ways it is possible to do things.
Conclusion
To sum it all up, the Internet of things (IoT) and wearable technology are the perfect match for each other. It is a rapidly growing field ripe with exciting functionality with the Internet of Things. This field can change how we interact with implementing IoT in healthcare, fitness, and other innovative technologies.
We have not seen the end of wearables because technology continues to evolve. The world is moving towards lighter, more powerful technology, and IoT-powered wearables perfectly fit the bill.
FAQs
Which model of IoT is popular among wearable IoT devices
There is no particular IoT model that dominates the wearable space. Different connectivity models are in use, and they vary based on functionality and use cases.
However, two typical examples include Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which delivers low power consumption and effortless communication with wireless devices, and cellular connectivity, which uses built-in cellular chips capable of connecting directly to the Internet.
Is FitBit an IoT device?
Yes, a Fitbit is considered an IoT device. Many models use BLE, allowing them to remain connected to wireless devices. This will enable them to track steps, sleep, blood pressure, and various health metrics.
Their IoT applications for smart wearables are also compelling. They provide detailed views of all the data that they collect, letting users know where to improve and tracking their progress toward personal goals.
What is an example of wearable IoT?
Smartwatches, fitness trackers, smart glasses, smart rings, and smart clothing are common IoT wearable examples.
