Exercising helps strengthen your heart, bones, and muscles. It also improves your mental health, boosts energy, helps you sleep better, and lowers stress.
Smart exercise equipment like Peloton bikes has monitors that stream live or on-demand classes and workouts. You can even compete with virtual opponents for a more immersive experience.
What is health and fitness technology?
Fitness technology is a tool that allows individuals to take control of their health and wellness. These devices range from smartwatches that track heart rate and exercise data to software programs that gamify workouts and provide personalized coaching for users.
These tools have become particularly popular with students and millennials, according to dissertation writing services. They can be used by individuals to track and analyze their workout results, as well as for at-home training sessions.
In addition to fitness apps, there is also a growing market for wellness apps that help people with everything from stress reduction to sleep tracking. Smart clothing such as Nadi X yoga pants, which use sensors in the lining to track posture and administer a buzz when your form is off, is another example of wellness technology.
Wearable technology
Wearables can track physical activity and vital signs, such as heart rate or blood glucose levels. They can also monitor sleep and offer suggestions for improvement. These devices can motivate people to maintain a healthy lifestyle, as they provide daily feedback on areas that could be improved upon or celebrate successes.
Most studies (54/179) described the strengths of wearables as objective and superior to self-reported data, technical reliability and innovation, and unobtrusiveness. However, many authors highlighted shortcomings such as the need for more accurate and stable measurements or the high cost of wearable devices.
More advanced wearables can sync with smartphones to store and share data. They may also convert energy from ambient sources, such as body heat or movement, to power the device. Examples include smart watches, fitness trackers, virtual reality headsets, and intelligent clothing, such as Google’s Project Jacquard jacket with knitted electrical fibers.
Virtual reality
VR can be a powerful tool in the field of health and fitness, as it provides an immersive experience that can help people learn new skills without the risk of injury. It can also help people overcome obstacles that might prevent them from getting enough physical activity.
This type of technology can be used to simulate experiences that directly impact people’s health and well-being, such as training medical staff in a simulation before operating on a patient. This can reduce the number of errors made during surgery, improve patient outcomes, and save time for both patients and healthcare professionals.
However, it is important to note that VR can cause “cybersickness” in some people. This is caused by the mismatch between the movement a person sees visually and the motion of their own body, causing nausea and dizziness.
Gamification
Gamification involves applying gaming elements to non-game applications to encourage user engagement. It leverages key concepts from the gaming industry that encourage user participation including competitiveness, mastery, sociability, and achievement.
Companies rely on gamification to engage their employees and customers with products and services like education, training, and customer loyalty programs. For example, a company may reward its employees who complete safety or compliance training with virtual rewards or physical prizes.
The use of gamification in e-learning is becoming increasingly popular. However, there are several challenges to consider when implementing this type of learning strategy. For starters, companies must understand that gamification is not a quick fix. It requires a long-term commitment and careful planning. It also requires the selection of appropriate game mechanics, such as levels, missions, and leaderboards.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence refers to computer programs that can think and act like the human mind. This technology enables computers to perform complex tasks and can be found in devices such as chatbots, smartwatches, navigation apps, voice recognition software, and self-driving cars.
Specifically, it encompasses machine learning and natural language processing. Machine learning is the process by which AI algorithms learn from data without being explicitly programmed. This allows them to improve their performance over time. Natural language processing is a subset of artificial intelligence that focuses on enabling computers to understand and interpret human language.
Other areas of AI include computer vision, which gives machines the ability to derive information from digital images and videos. Other AI applications include detecting fake news and disinformation by scanning social media posts and searching for keywords that are commonly used in false or sensationalist articles.
