It looks like an innocuous headset, however, this little gadget could save your life. Vigo is an innovative Bluetooth headset that the wearer can use to monitor their alertness in addition to using it for standard hands-free functionality with their phone. To track alertness, the headset works together with a mobile app and uses a combination of audio alerts and vibrations to stimulate the wearer when it notices drowsiness by tracking the wearer’s eye and head motion.
The device uses infrared reflectance oculography to make an accurate prediction. An average blink happens in 1/5th of a second – but there’s so much information packed in that small amount of time. Vigo tracks over 20 parameters in your blinks and watches how these variables change. This information, combined with data about your activity and head motion, allows Vigo to quantify your mental energy in real time.
Hundreds of thousands of fatal accidents take place around the world as drivers doze off while at the steering and these figures could be the tip of the iceberg as the fact is that it is very difficult to attribute a road crash to sleepiness as there is no test to determine this.
Fatigue is part of the modern day lifestyle and if your job involves a lot of driving or you are too much in love with your car and like to enjoy endlessly long drives and you have ever found yourself nodding off at the wheel Vigo can solve your problem.
Vigo stimulates you when you are not at your best, helps in tracking commercial driver productivity, optimizing work schedules, managing personal productivity, maintaining energy while studying, or even tracking medical conditions like narcolepsy. The headsets will be used in pilot studies at enterprise clients such as UPS, Aramex the largest freight company in the Middle East, and 123LoadBoard the biggest truck freight-matching firm in the US. Vigo retails at is $129 and weighs a mere 15 grams with a talk time of 12 hours.
