According to Amazon, how you speak is a useful indicator of your well-being, both emotionally and physically. As a result, the Halo Band will monitor your tone to determine if you’re feeling positive enough to get through your day. Every morning you will get a breakdown of your tonal patterns with tips on how to sound warmer, even if you are having a tooth-chilling encounter with your boss.
To function, tone uses a recurrent neural network that searches for indicators about a person’s position, energy, and tone. The intention over time is to invent your own tone patterns with the intention of helping you hear how you sound to others in certain situations. Amazon added that the speech samples are processed locally and never sent to the company’s cloud servers. It adds that you can block the listening of the band by pressing a button on the watch for three seconds.
As for the app itself, it is designed to help you identify and reduce your body fat percentage (BFP), which Amazon says is a better metric for health. Halo will apparently be able to produce a viable model of your body if you take a full-body selfie with your smartphone camera. The app will then create a 3D model to tell you your BFP, as well as a slider that shows you what you would look like if you were to lose more weight, or gain weight. Maulik Majmudar, MD of Amazon says that his system is as accurate as an expensive examination by doctors, which we are looking forward to testing.
Halo will also give you points to reward you for living well, and the more active you are, the more points you earn. So if you run everywhere, you will get a certain amount, but those who run everywhere will earn multiple points per day. You will also receive sleep monitoring with a sleep point, and scientifically supported challenges that will help you find a workout program that is best for you.
Amazon does not do this in isolation either, and has partnered with a number of partner companies, including Headspace and WW (formerly Weight Watchers), such as John Hancock Vitality. Apparently, the Halo Band will be the worthy choice for members of Vitality, which offers membership to selected subscribers for three years.
Amazon Halo is currently in a testing phase and users in the US can request to participate in the trial by signing up here. The hardware is, for early adopters, priced at $ 65, with the normal price expected to rise to $ 100, while the monthly subscription will return you $ 4 after an initial six-month trial period. People who buy the band can get it in three colors: Black, Blush and Silver, with additional band colors available for between $ 15 and $ 20 per doll.
