Heart and respiratory rate tracking is nearly ubiquitous on sleek fitness bands and bulbous smart rings. Where those kinds of metrics are not yet universal is on smartphones. On Thursday, Google announced plans to change that by launching new software that can capture your heart rate and breathing rate through your phone’s camera lens. The technology will be rolled out inside of Google Fit, the company’s health tracking platform, on Pixel phones.
To determine your breathing rate, the new application inside of Google Fit directs you to take a bust-length portrait-style photo of yourself. This allows the phone’s camera to see how fast your chest is rising and falling, from which it can calculate respiratory rate. To capture heart rate, you place your fingertip over the camera. The app then follows changes in skin color to measure blood flow. It uses photoplethysmography, the same technology as existing apps on the market that track skin-color changes to pick up on biological…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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