Today’s parents are faced with the ever-increasing challenge of prying their children away from digital devices and encouraging them to play in the physical world.
Elanation CEO and co-founder Katherine Maree Pace saw the opportunity to combine these two seemingly disparate forms of entertainment into a new type of wearable device designed specifically for kids.
“My co-founder Aimee [Atkins] and I decided to build a lifestyle technology company for kids; one that allowed them to engage in the digital revolution as a child,” she told IoT Hub.
“We decided to merge sports equipment with a massively multiplayer online game, curate current affairs for kids to unlock daily when they reach their physical activity goals, and build a really strong community around healthy, physical and digital play.”
What the Australian start-up created was the ETurbo. Unlike wearables geared towards adults, which count calories, sleeping patterns and obtain location data (among other functions), the ETurbo only measures steps, distance and heart rate, ensuring that a child's personal data is not collected, and can't therefore be exploited.
Furthermore, the child can pair the wearable to an Apple iPhone or iPad via Bluetooth and access an online game where the steps taken by the child are translated into ‘energy’ that the child’s online avatar can use while exploring the virtual world.
Once the avatar's energy is depleted, the child is encouraged to continue their physical play so they can progress further in the game.
The ETurbo is also compact enough to comfortably fit on a child’s wrist, and is waterproof in fresh water, meaning it can be used in lakes and chlorinated pools.
“I like to call it ‘children-centric design’. What we did is created a very high-quality wearable with all the features and functionality that were needed for a child between the ages of five and twelve,” she explained.
“Parents don’t care about calorie counting for their children, and the kids shouldn’t worry about it either, so we omitted it.
“There’s also a stopwatch in it, but one of the best features for kids is the watch, as kids at the target age are learning to read time.”
Source: http://www.iothub.com.au/news/how-elanation-built-a-child-friendly-wearable-448464