Google talked up the Pixel Watch 2’s new heart rate tracking hardware and how much more accurate it is. However, the new hardware isn’t the only improvement — the Watch 2 has some handy new artificial intelligence (AI) to boost heart rate accuracy further.
A new blog post from Google goes into detail about what’s new with heart rate tracking on the Pixel Watch 2, as well as the recently announced Fitbit Charge 6 fitness tracker, which also benefits from the new hardware and AI. Per Google, there are two main things going on.
First, there’s the new multi-path heart rate sensor, which can ‘see’ more than the typical sensor. The blog post explains that heart rate tracking works by using a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor to measure the volume and movement of blood circulation. The PPG sensor does this by shining a green LED light onto your wrist, which reflects the movement of blood back to the sensor.
The multi-path sensor increases the number of LEDs and photodiodes, which detect the reflected light, to cover more surface area than the original Pixel Watch, which has a single-path sensor. This can increase the accuracy of heart rate tracking when all the sensors are active, though it’s worth noting to improve battery life, the Pixel Watch 2 only powers on all the sensors when in exercise mode.
The second part is AI algorithms, which Google has worked to improve through vigorous testing and training. Google says those algorithms are really good at parsing large amounts of data. Since the multi-path sensor gathers more data, it works well with the AI algorithms. Unfortunately, Google didn’t provide much more detail than that.
Finally, Google highlighted in the blog post that it brought the improved AI algorithms to the Fitbit Charge 6. The company says it optimized the algorithms for the Charge 6’s lower-power processor and made sure the added compute load wouldn’t hamper the tracker’s seven-day battery life.
Source: Google Via: Android Police
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