Logging close contacts
The hot new COVID tech is wearable and constantly tracks you
In Rochester, Mich., Oakland University is preparing to hand out wearable devices to students that log skin temperature once a minute — or more than 1,400 times per day — in the hopes of pinpointing early signs of the coronavirus.
In Plano, Texas, employees at the headquarters of Rent- A- Center recently started wearing proximity detectors that log their close contacts with one another and can be used to alert them to possible virus exposure.
And in Knoxville, Tenn., students on the University of Tennessee football team tuck proximity trackers under their shoulder pads during games — allowing the team’s medical director to trace which players may have spent more than 15 minutes near a teammate or an opposing player.
The powerful new surveillance systems, wearable devices that continuously monitor users, are the latest high- tech gadgets to emerge in the battle to hinder the coronavirus. Some sports leagues, factories and nursing homes have already deployed them. Resorts are rushing to adopt them. A few schools are preparing to try them. And the conference industry is eyeing them as a potential tool to help reopen convention centers.
“Everyone is in the early stages of this,” said Laura Becker, a research manager focusing on employee experience at the International Data Corp., a market research firm. “If it works, the market could be huge because everyone wants to get back to some sense of normalcy.”
Companies and industry analysts say the wearable trackers fill an important gap in pandemic safety. Many employers and colleges have adopted virus screening tools such as symptom- checking apps and temperature- scanning cameras. But they are not designed to catch the
estimated 40% of people with COVID- 19 infections who may never develop symptoms such as fevers.
Some offices have also adopted smartphone virus- tracing apps that detect users’ proximity. But the new wearable trackers serve a different audience: workplaces such as factories where workers cannot bring their phones, or sports teams whose athletes spend time close together.
This spring, when coronavirus infections began to spike, many professional football and basketball teams in the United States were already using sports performance monitoring technology from Kinexon, a company in Munich whose wearable sensors track data such as an athlete’s speed and distance. The company quickly adapted its devices for the pandemic, introducing SafeZone, a system that logs close contacts between players or coaches and emits a warning light if they get within 6 feet. The NFL began requiring players, coaches and staff to wear the trackers in September.
The data has helped trace the contacts of about 140 NFL players and personnel who have tested positive since September, including an outbreak among the Tennessee Titans, said Dr. Thom Mayer, the medical director of the NFL Players Association. The system is particularly helpful in ruling out people who spent fewer than 15 minutes near infected colleagues, he added.
College football teams in the Southeastern Conference also use Kinexon trackers. Dr. Chris Klenck, the head team physician at the University of Tennessee, said the proximity data helped teams understand when the athletes spent
city government had received reports of a bear cub in the same area, according to local reports. That led to the deployment of the mechanical wolves.
A shortage of acorns and shrinking rural populations — which serve as a buffer between the wilderness and the more populated urban areas — are among the factors pushing the wild bears into other areas in search of food before their hibernation.
Yuji Ota, the chief executive of Ohta Seiki, told Japan’s public broadcaster NHK last month that the robo- wolf could help humans and bears “coexist,” chasing the animals back into the mountains.
“We want to let the bears know, ‘ Human settlements aren’t where you live,’ ” he also told The Mainichi newspaper.
The Monster Wolf was originally rolled out in 2016 to protect farmlands and crops. Since then, deer, bears and monkeys have been filmed leaping away as the mechanical contraption howls. About 70 wolves are in use across the country, from Hokkaido to the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa, where they protect pineapple farms from wild animals.
As for real wolves, they are believed to have been extinct in Japan for more than a century.