Fullpower is a privately held intellectual property and technology licensing company based in Santa Cruz, California. Fullpower's cloud-based IoT and wearable solutions are used in products from Nike, Movado, Simmons Bedding Company, Serta and others to track activity and monitor sleep.
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History
Fullpower was founded in Santa Cruz, California in 2003 by Philippe Kahn and Sonia Lee. The inspiration behind some of the key Fullpower technology stems from Kahn's passion for sailing; Kahn created prototype sleep trackers using biosensors that optimized 26-minute power naps to maximize sleep benefits and sail time.
Kahn and Lee previously founded two other companies: Starfish Software developed intellectual property for device synchronization, especially for wireless devices, and LightSurf created the camera phone, allowing users to share pictures instantly on public networks. Both companies were acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars by Motorola and VeriSign.
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MotionX
The MotionX Platform announced in 2008 is a suite of coupled and integrated firmware, software and communication components for wearable wireless devices. The MotionX Platform is used by several wearable product brands, including Nike, Manufacture Modules Technologies (MMT), Alpina, Frederique Constant, Mondaine, Jawbone and others.
In 2008 Fullpower announced applications for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch under the brand MotionX. The first application released was MotionX-Poker, a multi-touch and motion-based dice game for the iPhone available for sale through Apple's App Store.
Fullpower released MotionX-GPS on the iPhone in October 2008. MotionX-GPS is a handheld GPS Multi-Sport app for runners, hikers, sailors, stand up paddle boarding (SUP), cyclists, geocachers, and other outdoor sport enthusiasts. It leverages the iPhone built-in GPS chip as well as other on-board sensors to provide location data. MotionX-GPS supports map data provided by OpenStreetMap, Google, USGS and others.
MotionX-GPS Drive for the iPhone, a door-to-door pedestrian and driving navigation application, was released in September 2009. With the announcement of the iPad in May 2010, MotionX released customized versions of its navigation application for the iPad.
On September 7, 2010, Nike released the Nike+ GPS App (now called Nike+ Running) that tracks human motion using the accelerometer and GPS sensors of the iPhone. MotionX provides the underlying motion sensing technology for the Nike+ GPS Application. The application was selected as one of the Wall Street Journal 's ten best iPhone Apps of the year.
At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, JVC and Pioneer Corporation announced car stereo systems that integrate with the MotionX-GPS Drive application so that driving directions are shown on the in-car screen and audio verbal directions are heard over the car speakers. This was said to be the first time a commercially available iPhone navigation application used an after-market in-car screen as a display.
In February 2012, the MotionX 24/7 application was announced for the Apple App Store. The application has functions for sleep analysis, heart rate monitoring, and activity monitoring.
Wearable devices and end-to-end infrastructure
Jawbone launched the UP band with ID design by Yves Behar and powered by the MotionX technology in November 2011. The device analyzes the user's activity and sleep with the sensors built into the band. A vibrator in the band is used to wake the users up at the optimal time in a given time window and provided inactivity alerts when the user has been idle longer than a set time interval. MotionX technology is also in the less expensive UP Move that launched in November 2014. Like previous UP bands, the UP Move coin-cell battery powered pod counts steps and tracks sleep, but it does not have the vibrating motor feature.
Fullpower formed the joint venture Manufacture Modules Technologies (MMT) in 2015 with Union Horlogere Holdings and launched the MotionX Horological Smartwatch Open Platform for the Swiss watch industry.
Fullpower creates and manages the circuit design, firmware, smartphone applications, as well as the cloud Infrastructure. MMT manages the Swiss watch movement development and production as well as licensing and support for the Swiss watch industry.
The initial partners were Frederique Constant, the Geneva-based luxury watch manufacturer of classical watches; Alpina, the Swiss Sports Watch manufacturer founded in 1883; and Mondaine, known for its SBB Swiss Railway watches. Together, they are offering ten different models in designer collections for both women and men. Frederique Constant announced in June 2015 that their horological smartwatches were available in stores, and Mondaine started a limited pre-order of their Helvetica 1 Smart watch in July 2015.
In November 2015, Movado, a luxury watchmaker founded in 1881, announced the release of the Movado Motion collection of fine Swiss made watches, powered by MMT's MotionX technology platform. The collection includes the women's Bellina and the men's Museum Sport models.
In January, 2016, Simmons Bedding Company and Serta announced plans for a "smart bed" powered by Fullpower's Sleeptracker sensor technology. The Beautyrest SmartMotion base powered by Sleeptracker offers sleep tracking technology that can work with any mattress to track deep, light and REM sleep. Serta SleepGPS with Sleeptracker Technology is used in the Motion Custom II model.
The Beautyrest Sleeptracker monitor launched in March 2017 as the bedding industry's first cloud-based, stand-alone solution capable of monitoring two individuals simultaneously and providing personalized tips to improve sleep. Fullpower's Sleeptracker Artificial Intelligence Engine patented technology powers the end to end system. In June 2017, Tomorrow Sleep also started selling Sleeptracker monitors powered by Fullpower technology.
Patents
As of December 2016 the Fullpower wearable patent portfolio includes more than 125 patents issued or pending covering Sleeptracker, MotionX, bands, pods, smart watches, eyewear, clothing, sensor-fusion, health, medical, wellness and machine learning.
Some of Fullpower's issued US patents include:
- US patent number 9,474,876 B1 covers a sleep monitoring system, including a "method or apparatus to improve sleep efficacy" by monitoring user's sleep patterns continuously and making adjustments to various types of sleep aids accordingly.
- US patent number 9,192,326 covers covering a sleep monitoring system, including monitoring a user's movement to determine when the user is falling asleep, as well as distinguishing between power naps and longer sleeps. This enables the user to optimize their sleep patterns, including setting wake up alarms allowing them to wake at the optimal time in their sleep cycle to feel more refreshed.
- US patent number 8,996,332 covers key practical aspects of monitoring human activity, specifically identifying motion states of the user. Automatic activity identification is important for smartwatches and advanced fitness trackers.
- US patent number 8,568,310 is "a method of using a motion sensor and a location-based sensor together to perform sensor fusion, enabling activity identification," according to the patent description. Other related US Patents include numbers 8,187,182, 7,647,195, 7,970,586, and 8,320,578.
- US patent number 8,187,182 outlines a method and apparatus using sensor fusion for accurate activity identification. US patent number 7,705,723 outlines a method and apparatus to provide outbreak notifications based on historical location data.
References
External links
- Official website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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