Ellen Sundh’s Bad Posture belt uses an Arduino, wave shield, and a flex sensor to detect when the user slouches. If your posture needs correcting, the belt literally yells at you. How’s that for motivation?
The belt is calibrated when the user presses a pushbutton after attaining good posture. After that, he/she is free to be lambasted by this piece of wearable tech.
[via The Creators Project]
As a lifelong sloucher (unfortunately — but not entirely my fault), I can say that this is a very bad idea. The only thing that has helped me is the Alexander Technique and related fields, that show you how little connection between your brain and your body actually exist. Things like this are the equivalent of my school teachers and parents and all the other people in my life who have sniped, “Stand up straight!” and so I fly into this completely unsustainable and painful shoulders-back-head-up-chest-out stance. All that taught me, and all this belt would teach anybody, is that good posture = pain, which is not true. I would suggest Ms. Sundh read Michael Gelb’s “Body Learning,” and find a way to put her no doubt considerable talents towards something that doesn’t encourage people to torture their bodies in pursuit of some quantifiable, but incorrect idea of normal.
Fun project. Another fun thing you could do is a hat with an accelerometer that yells at you if you tilt your head. Like a modern version of that ‘walk with books on your head’ exercise…
I was thinking about this last week, at a physical therapy appointment. My first thought was that there had to be some way to make an electronic reminder that I am slouching and rounding my bad shoulder over. Especially when on the computer. (Minecraft.) Then, here it is. Very nice.
ha ha ha! she made a depressed shoe shelf as well!!
))))
http://www.sundh.com/blog/depressed-shoe-shelf/
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