Hiyd is a health tracker that attaches to the watch you already wear

If you’re a watch enthusiast, you probably don’t want to exchange your prized timepiece for a bulky fitness tracker. But Hiyd founder Salah Batroukh doesn’t think people should have to sacrifice fashion for function. “We don’t think that health tracking needs to be this overly conscious decision where you have to change something about the way you look,” Batroukh told TechCrunch. “That’s the ethos of the entire company. Our plan is to build out this product ecosystem of invisible health tracking.”

如果你是一位手表爱好者，你可能不想用笨重的健身追踪器来替换你珍贵的手表。但 Hiyd 的创始人萨拉赫·巴特鲁赫（Salah Batroukh）认为，人们不应该为了功能而牺牲时尚。“我们认为健康追踪不应该成为一种需要你改变外貌的刻意决定，”巴特鲁赫告诉 TechCrunch。“这就是我们整个公司的理念。我们的计划是建立一个隐形健康追踪的产品生态系统。”

Hiyd’s first device to make health tracking look cooler is a small, slim disc that attaches to the back of your watch via microsuction, a material technology that allows the sensor to sit flush under your watch without magnets or adhesive. That way, it won’t leave any residue or mess with the mechanics of watches that keep time using magnets. “Microsuction is essentially a textured silicone, with hundreds of tiny pockets per square inch molded into a pliable sheet. So when you press on it, it pushes air out of all those pockets, and you end up with a vacuum — just like traditional suction cups but scaled down incredibly,” Batroukh explained.

Hiyd 推出的首款让健康追踪看起来更酷的设备是一个小巧纤薄的圆盘，通过微吸附技术贴在手表背面。这种材料技术使传感器能够平整地贴合在手表下方，无需磁铁或粘合剂。这样，它就不会留下任何残留物，也不会干扰使用磁铁计时手表内部的机械结构。“微吸附本质上是一种纹理硅胶，每平方英寸有数百个微小凹槽，模压成一张柔韧的薄片。当你按压它时，它会把所有凹槽里的空气挤出来，从而形成真空——就像传统的吸盘一样，只是缩小了无数倍，”巴特鲁赫解释道。

“It works incredibly at stopping shear forces, but a little bit of prying allows it to pop right off, which is ideal for us. It’s also incredibly thin at just 0.3 mm with our manufacturing processes.” According to Batroukh, the sensor, which measures 2.7 mm thick and weighs 7 grams, collects biometrics similar to those of leading wearables, including heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep staging, movement, calories burned, and VO2 max estimations, then syncs to an iOS or Android app.

“它在抵抗剪切力方面效果极佳，但稍微撬一下就能取下，这对我们来说非常理想。通过我们的制造工艺，它还能做到仅 0.3 毫米的超薄厚度。”据巴特鲁赫介绍，该传感器厚度为 2.7 毫米，重量为 7 克，能够收集与主流可穿戴设备类似的生物识别数据，包括心率、心率变异性、睡眠阶段、运动量、卡路里消耗和最大摄氧量估算，并同步到 iOS 或 Android 应用程序中。

In order to fine-tune the sensor, Hiyd’s team is filming themselves doing various activities, then labeling those datasets to train its AI. “We go for a walk and say, ‘This is somebody walking, this is somebody jogging, this is somebody running,’” he said. “The one thing that AI is really good at is data analysis, so we can basically fit a lot of heuristic analysis into our sets really quickly.” On its app, Hiyd is also working to incorporate nutrition tracking. The goal isn’t to count calories, but rather to help users glean insights about how their eating habits impact their sleep quality or workout performance.

为了微调传感器，Hiyd 团队正在拍摄自己进行各种活动的视频，然后对这些数据集进行标注以训练其人工智能。“我们去散步，然后说：‘这是某人在走路，这是某人在慢跑，这是某人在跑步，’”他说。“人工智能最擅长的一点就是数据分析，所以我们基本上可以很快地将大量的启发式分析应用到我们的数据集中。”在应用程序上，Hiyd 也正在努力整合营养追踪功能。其目标不是计算卡路里，而是帮助用户深入了解他们的饮食习惯如何影响睡眠质量或锻炼表现。

“What we will do is say like, ‘Hey, on days where you work out at 10 p.m. instead of 10 a.m., your sleep quality is actually worse,’ and that’ll be specific to you,” he said. “Or it’ll say, ‘Hey, we think you had a less deep sleep last night because you had a slice of cake before you went to bed, and the sugar affected it.’” Batroukh spent about seven years as a manufacturing design engineer at Apple, a company synonymous with iconic hardware. But he wanted to know if he could design something great without the support of a global brand and a multitrillion-year-old market cap.

“我们会做的是告诉用户，比如：‘嘿，在你晚上 10 点而不是早上 10 点锻炼的日子里，你的睡眠质量实际上更差，’这会是针对你个人的分析，”他说。“或者它会说：‘嘿，我们认为你昨晚深度睡眠较少，因为你在睡前吃了一块蛋糕，糖分影响了睡眠。’”巴特鲁赫曾在苹果公司担任了约七年的制造设计工程师，苹果公司是标志性硬件的代名词。但他想知道，在没有全球品牌支持和数万亿美元市值的情况下，他是否还能设计出伟大的产品。

“One of the reasons I left Apple was a lot of the products became a little bit more about being an Apple product, rather than being something for the customer,” he said. “[Hiyd] gives me the opportunity to do the exact opposite.” Batroukh is joined by fellow founders Omar Shakir, an experienced mechanical engineer who is the startup’s CTO, and Mahamad Charawi, who is its head of software. Hiyd is bringing its tiny sensor to the big stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, where the company is competing as one of the top 20 companies at Startup Battlefield on Wednesday. In November, the company plans to launch a Kickstarter. So far, over 16,000 people have made deposits to secure Hiyd’s first units.

“我离开苹果的原因之一是，许多产品更多地是为了成为‘苹果产品’，而不是为了服务客户，”他说。“[Hiyd] 给了我一个机会去做完全相反的事情。”与巴特鲁赫共同创业的还有经验丰富的机械工程师、公司首席技术官奥马尔·沙基尔（Omar Shakir），以及软件主管马哈马德·查拉维（Mahamad Charawi）。Hiyd 正将其微型传感器带到 TechCrunch Disrupt 的大舞台上，该公司将于周三作为 Startup Battlefield 前 20 名公司之一参与竞争。11 月，该公司计划在 Kickstarter 上发起众筹。到目前为止，已有超过 16,000 人支付了定金以预订 Hiyd 的首批产品。