Cisco and Verizon showcase the Connected Athlete Experience – a pathway to Internet of Everything

By Kiran Matty, Marketing Manager, SP Mobility Solutions

Doesn’t it boggle your mind to see how more objects are becoming embedded with sensors and gaining the ability to communicate?  Indeed, we live in a “Connected World.”  According to Cisco IBSG, a whopping 37 billion intelligent things would be connected to the internet by 2020. Recall that the number of connected things has already surpassed the human population. However, more than 99% of things in the physical world are still not connected to the Internet.  Internet of Everything  (IoE) has the potential to connect the unconnected, thereby opening up unprecedented opportunities. But, it’s not just things that are connected to the internet. According to Gartner, people themselves will become nodes on the Internet, constantly emitting information.

Service Providers and Enterprises recognize this opportunity and are looking for innovative applications to harness the power of IoE to gain competitive advantage. Further, they love the idea of getting access to newer verticals such as Wireless Healthcare and Fitness, etc. that IoE encompasses.

Cisco’s IP DNA and its extensive thought leadership in the Internet of Everything space makes it uniquely positioned to help its customers capture the value of the Internet of Everything.  Cisco’s “Connected Athlete” in collaboration with Verizon is one such innovation that showcases the power of IoE to create enormous value in the Wireless Healthcare and fitness vertical. However, it does not stop there; the underlying technology can be extended to other verticals as well.

Connected Athlete lets Athletes get real-time data on pace, power, drive, and more. The result? Competitive athletes can step up their game with objective data and the analytics that are critical to boosting performance. Bigger, faster, stronger!

To hear more about this innovation, please take a look at this short video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=allGh1mR63c

Under the hood, Connected Athlete leverages the Cisco Intelligent Network and ACM Systems’ smart-insole wireless sensor technology, to help enable trainers to improve their athlete’s performance and reduce the chance of injury by providing real-time and historical analytics of motion and pressure data.

The Cisco Intelligent Network can scale to support billions of connected devices and applications that allow people, processes and data to interact. The Internet of Everything leverages IP-enabled devices including the Cisco 819 Integrated Services Router and increased broadband access with Verizon 4G LTE, cloud and IPv6.

The “Connected Athlete” demonstration allows people, processes and data to work together and interact with Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) and Medical Body Area Networks (MBAN) to monitor an athletes’ biometric performance, such heart and respiratory rates, blood oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, glucose and lactate concentrations in the blood, and use this data to accurately assess the athlete’s in-position physical condition and energy expenditure.

To see Cisco’s Internet of Everything in action, please check out Cisco’s Chief Futurist, Dave Evan’s recent blog.

And for more information on the Internet of Everything and the Connected Athlete, please go to Cisco’s Ron Malenfant’s whitepaper.