FocusMotion has opened up their motion tracking platform with the launch of Preview app. Now FocusMotion is ready to analyze your workouts and movements with a certain wearable that is not necessarily built for fitness—a smart watch. At the moment, the app automatically pairs with the smart watch Pebble, but an Apple Watch version is on the horizon. FocusMotion’s platform has also already been used by the LA Dodgers, Microsoft, Samsung, Pebble and Fitocracy, to name a few larger brands.
FocusMotion’s Preview is designed to merge smartwatches or wearables with the best of a fitness tracker. With algorithms that take advantage of accelerometers and gyrometers, the Preview app has five different modes that track more than 50 different popular exercises. Not only does it track the amount of reps, but also it will comment on a user’s range of motion, tempo and consistency with these exercises.
So, it dually helps with both counting and correcting form. The two most basic modes within the Preview app are “Quant” and “Freestyle.” With Quant, a user can choose what kind of exercise they are doing and the app will track that movement.
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Freestyle, on the other hand, identifies what exercise the user is performing, and comes as “Freestyle +,” which tracks a full workout and “Freestyle Flow,” which is only used for a single exercise.
Launching today! @focus_motion‘s Preview app for iOS and @Pebble devices! It’s how powerful every wearable could be https://t.co/012VlRdMCv
— FocusMotion (@focus_motion) May 26, 2016
The “Creator” mode within the app allows the user to go beyond the 50 exercises previously integrated into Preview—the user can essentially teach the app a new exercise to monitor.
Finally, “Activity +” follows a user’s general activities over the course of a day or chosen period of time—like walking, running, step counting and others.
The Preview app comes as big news for FocusMotion, a company that participated in the Dodgers Accelerator last fall. Apart from this, they have been attempting to create similar algorithms that will help not only in the sphere of regular workouts, but also with workplace movement and in clinical settings.
“It’s not enough to target steps and sleep,” said co-founder and CEO of FocusMotion Cavan Canavan of FocusMotion’s greater purpose in developing these advanced wearable algorithms. “We should be applying this technology to prevent workplace injury, speed up physical therapy recovery, and even monitor police use of force. People don’t realize how powerful wearable devices are because all they’ve seen is steps for the last 10 years.”
While the Preview app does not necessarily reach to these high ideals, it does showcase how an algorithm could make a wearable’s function completely different. It can turn a smart watch into your fitness best friend.