Thursday 30 March the final symposium of Wearable Technologies for Active Living (WTAL) took place in Hattrick’s pub in Groningen. Since late 2013 a consortium of northern companies and public institutions have been working on an activity tracker for children. During the event the results were presented and a vision for future endeavors was shared.
WTAL has been a collaboration between Dog Back, e-Vitality, UMCG, Kxa, Umaco, GGD Drenthe, Hanzehogeschool Groningen and its Quantified Self Institute. Its goal? Researching the requirements for an activity tracker for children and then actually making it, both in terms of hardware and software. During the final symposium each partner presented its results and developments via the ‘poster wall’.
Furthermore, there were a number of presentations:
- Opening by Henk Hindriks, Projectcoördinator WTAL, Quantified Self Institute
- Research by Johan de Jong, Lector Healthy Lifestyle, Sports & Physical Activity Hanzehogeschool Groningen
- Wearable (prototype) by Jan Reinder Fransens, Manager R&D and Jasper den Boer, Projectmanager Umaco B.V.
- Dashboard by Gjalt Bearda, Software Engineer KXA
- Final remarks and vision by Margreet Schurer, project manager WTAL
For a quick overview of the project, please watch our WTAL video. Want to read more stories about this project? The university magazine of Hanze UAS wrote a great article (in Dutch) about a student who graduated by making a wearable from a metal candy box as part of WTAL.
