Michael Luna, an inventor who became chief technology officer at the San Francisco consumer-technology company Jawbone, carries his career interests over to his personal life. At Jawbone, Michael Luna explored human and human-technology interactions to plan for new products; as a hobbyist, he studies bees to see how their interactions might apply to human behavior.
Among the best-known examples of bee behavior is the honeybee waggle dance, used by bees to communicate the location of food sources to other bees in their hive. AnimalWise.com says that a forager bee dances in a figure-eight pattern to communicate the direction and distance to the food source; the communication works to guide bees directly to it.
Where bees use their bodies to communicate messages, wearable devices use Bluetooth, a low-power wireless connectivity technology used to stream audio, transfer data, and broadcast information between devices, according to Bluetooth.com.
As effective as Bluetooth has been, its use in wearable devices has drawbacks, says a news article in WearableTech.com. The article, Future Wearables Use Your Body to Communicate, by Ryan Daws, says that is because the user’s body blocks the Bluetooth signal, causing an effect called path loss, where the signal is weakened and security is compromised. The distance that the signal is forced to travel makes it susceptible to eavesdropping.
The article says that University of California, San Diego, has discovered a way to use the body, rather than Bluetooth, as a medium for data transmission. This new technique places two coils on the body to create a magnetic field, similar to the magnetic field used in NFC (near-field communication) technology. It allows wearable devices to use less power and operate for longer periods of time, which is important in devices used to monitor the wearer’s health.
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