Camera-based vitals in Google Fit

Google is adding camera-based vitals measurement to its Fit app on Android. Initially rolling out to Pixel phones, the new feature can measure your respiratory (breathing) rate by looking at your face and upper torso through the selfie camera — something that, judging from a cursory Scholar search, was only becoming a mainstream research topic just two years ago! The rate at which computer vision research makes it from an idea to deployment on millions of phones remains pretty astonishing. The Fit app can also read your heart rate when you place your finger on the back-facing camera, though I don’t think this is as new: I’ve used iPhone apps that did this years ago — but one big difference is that Google has actually done clinical studies to validate these features.