This might be the future of calorie tracking

Nov 7, 2014 10:11 GMT  ·  By

Most smart fitness bands out there have the capacity to track calorie ingestion in order to help users keep their eating habits on track and maintain a healthy diet.

But most of these systems automatically infer how much you have eaten during a meal by reading other related parameters. However, the methods are quite clumsy and might not produce the most accurate results.

The bottom line is that users aren’t required to manually input the exact data related to every meal. And even if that were the case, would you be able to stop yourself from cheating and inputting a lesser number just to feel at peace with yourself?

Science comes to the rescue

Folks at the University of Alabama want to go about things in a more scientific way. Researchers under the supervision of Dr. Edward Sazonov are working on a headset wearable that can automatically track what the wearer is eating. No cheating involved.

The machine is called the Automatic Ingestion Monitor (AIM), and for the time being, it’s only available as a 3D-printed prototype to be worn over the ear.

When the person wearing the AIM starts to eat, the device activates and starts monitoring chewing activity. The AIM is smart enough to be able to tell apart chewing from different activities such as talking.

The wearable is not only used to track your checking pattern, but in quite a bizarre twist, it will take photographs of whatever you’re munching on. After that, the data is relayed to a paired smartphone via Bluetooth connectivity.

It’s the app’s job to identify the types of food shown in the photographs, and calories for each edible item are deduced from the numbers of chews associated with it.

At some point, Sazonov will test the accuracy of the system against an established technique that estimates caloric intake based on the body’s elimination rate of stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes added to water that was consumed.

If the tests prove to be successful, AIM might prove to be a cheaper and easier alternative to the water-based method.

AIM still has a long way to go before making it into consumer products

For the time being, the AIM is still in experimental phase, so it might take quite a while before the system is refined enough to reach popular devices such as the next-gen Fitbit.

Naturally, AIM will first reach the market as a medical device or it will be implemented in medical devices. After which, it will move on to be included in consumer products.

Automatic Ingestion Monitor (AIM) (2 Images)

The AIM could be the future of wearables
How the AIM works
Open gallery