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If you point your iPhone’s camera at your face, it may detect effort, tension, or a complete lack thereof. Here’s what it means that future iPhones won’t be able to fool Apple’s Activity Ring.
The screen you’re looking at may have a camera that tracks your face
At first, it sounds like Apple is looking to see if your cheeks are sagging, but the plan is to assess when you burn calories through exercise, rather than evaluating the calorie intake of the burger you’re eating. It’s about figuring out if there are any.
The newly published patent application “Tracking Calorie Burning Using a Camera” is essentially based on how much effort you put into your exercise.
The idea is that your iPhone captures “facial tracking data” to help determine your step count, speed, and stride length. By combining it with a motion sensor, it is possible to determine the slope of the road surface while driving, and ultimately calculate a “calorie consumption model.”
Devices already exist that use things like motion sensors and heart rate sensors to estimate calorie expenditure. However, these “fitness applications require a tracking device to be worn on the user’s body, typically on the wrist, chest, torso, or foot.”
Apple doesn’t seem to be too keen on wearable fitness trackers, even though the Apple Watch is one of the best wearable fitness trackers out there. In this proposal, the calculations would be done by scanning your face, and the scanner would be placed on a treadmill.
Details of a patent application showing how to incorporate a fitness camera into a treadmill.
”[A] “A face tracker on a tracking device (e.g., facial tracking software on a smartphone) receives video frames captured by a front-facing camera of a tracking device, such as a smartphone,” the patent application continues. For example, while a user is exercising on a treadmill, a smartphone is placed on top of her treadmill console. ”
“Face Tracker uses various coordinate transformations to track the movement of one or more features on your face,” Apple says. The patent application emphasizes that other software can also be used and lists examples, including Apple’s ARKit, an augmented reality framework first released in 2017.
Around the same time, Apple also launched GymKit, which integrates the iPhone directly into fitness devices such as treadmills. This new patent application appears to assume that GymKit is not available. Otherwise, the treadmill could already transmit data about speed and incline.
However, Apple notes that this proposal is not limited to treadmill training, but can be used for any exercise or exercise where camera tracking data provides an indication of fitness metrics, including but not limited to tracking other parts of the human body. He says it can also be used for exercise equipment. ”
“For example, the disclosed embodiments are applicable to any exercise, health monitoring application where vertical or lateral movement of the face may be captured by a camera, including but not limited to counting squats, pull-ups, or jump rope steps, or fitness machines.” It goes on to say, “When there is vertical movement of the face or lateral movement of the face, such as when practicing side steps.”
Apple doesn’t want to be Peloton
Patent applications are long on details, but the benefits are explained in detail, and it’s the how, not the why, that matters. But in this case, while the many illustrations of the patent-pending treadmill hint that Apple wants to tap into Peloton’s market, the text suggests otherwise.
It’s definitely not about exercise devices made by Apple, but rather future iPhones used in treadmills from any manufacturer. Otherwise, Apple’s treadmill would constantly report how fast you were running, so there would be no reason to use facial scans to estimate your training effort.
Using facial tension to calculate calories burned is a smart idea, and three inventors have some clever ideas. But it’s too bad the camera can’t catch you going to his Applebee’s, so he has to atone for his sins by doing five laps at the gym.
To get the closest thing to that ideal right now, you should use an app like MyFitnessPal. And while we can’t automatically judge the value of pizza, we can encourage people to be honest about their calorie intake.
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