The fitness tracker market is set to boom over the next few years with Parks Associates predicting that the value of the market will increase to $5.4 billion in 2019, up from $2 billion in 2014. Everyone is releasing a fitness tracker or adding additional capabilities to devices that we already use, like the recently released ResearchKit from Apple.

However, researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way to monitor heart and breathing rates without the need for a wearable device. The MIT team presented the system, Vital-Radio, at the 2015 CHI Conference currently taking place in Seoul, South Korea.

The Vital-Radio works similar to radar; it requires no attachment of sensors to your body and even works through walls. It transmits a signal and then uses an algorithm to distinguish between humans and inanimate objects based on the reflected signal. The system will track your breathing by monitoring the rise and fall movements of the chest while looking at indistinguishable pulsating movement in the neck to track your heart rate.

The Vital-Radio, however, battles to pick up the breathing and heart rate movements when a person is walking around but manages to be quite accurate when a person is stationary like at home or in a hospital room. To test the accurateness of the system the team tested it using 14 test subjects. These subjects were also using heart and breathing monitoring devices in order for a comparison to be completed.

In addition, the Vital-Radio system and your Wi-Fi router could become one, with the ability for the system to be built into your home router and providing you with an internet connection as well as monitoring your health.

Another feature of the Vital-Radio system is the detection of a person’s emotional state. Eventually, the system would be able to adapt the surroundings to make the person more comfortable, i.e. adjustment of the lighting or playing music to suit or assist with our mood.

The MIT team is refining the system to include the ability to monitor the heartbeat of a fetus while still in the womb. One day it could be similar to an electrocardiogram and monitor the heart rate in detail.

Image: SiliconANGLE