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This article is more than 1 year old

Microsoft wearable makes lazy lardies pay to play on the couch

Shake your tail feather or Redmond wrist-job will dip into your pocket

Microsoft-backed academics have developed a internet-of-things wristband that will send donations to charity when exercise runs are missed.

The punishing peripheral is a concept that the team reckons could be developed such that it will raid a lounge lizard's bank account whenever the gyro and body sensor instruments detect an insufficient level of pain and sweat.

Microsoft Summer School, 2016.

Microsoft Summer School, 2016

The student developer team says the wrist band dreamt up in a Microsoft hacker lab was originally to be a lie detector that would detect body temperature and other sensor readings.

Eventually, they turned to behavioural economics to inspire a possible solution. In theory, a bracelet could be configured to automatically trigger a transfer of funds from the jogger’s account to a charity in response to missing a planned workout.

Microsoft scribe John Kaiser says the band was developed as part of Redmond's eighth summer school in the Russian city of Kazan which sports the nation's largest tech park.

"[Students] turned to behavioural economics … in theory, a bracelet could be configured to automatically trigger a transfer of funds from the jogger’s account to a charity in response to missing a planned workout," Kaiser says.

He says some 60 largely postgraduate students herald from Russia and the independent states building internet-of-things things and developer kits.

Other products include a band that buzzes hopeful guitarists when they strum the wrong chord, and sensors that optimise indoor lighting for houseplants. ®

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