Typical heart rate monitoring in wearable tech, like smart watches or wireless earbuds, relies at least partially on photoplethysmography (PPG), which uses light pulses to measure blood activity.
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Google scientists wrote in a new research blog spotted by 9to5Google yesterday that they had tried a different approach, called audioplethysmography (APG), that uses ultrasound to measure heart rate.
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That last one is notable since heart rate accuracy with darker natural skin tones or tattoos has been an ongoing problem with smartwatches and other wearables until now.
Google’s researchers also found the ultrasound approach worked fine when music was playing, but said that it had issues in noisy environments and that “the APG signal can sometimes be very noisy and could be heavily disturbed by body motion.” However, they found they could overcome the motion problem by using multiple frequencies and teasing out the most accurate signal among them.
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Heart rate monitoring headphones have been around for a while, but they use the PPG approach and can be very sensitive to intense movement or a bad fit.
Bear in mind that this is only a study and doesn’t mean Google is about to release headphones that do this (or update your Pixel Buds Pro to do it).
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