NTT Communications, its affiliate NTT Resonant Inc. and foo.log Inc. jointly announced the launch of a field trial for the world’s first cloud-based mobile service to estimate calorie consumption by analyzing daily food-intake and walking levels and then automatically recommend how the user can achieve their health goals.
The trial, which also includes the participation of the University of Tokyo, Tipness Ltd. and L-NET Co., Ltd., will last until this summer. A commercial version of the Health Enhancement Assist Service is expected to be launched no later than the first quarter of 2012.
Monitors are welcome to apply for participation in the trial. The applicant can use any smartphone running Android OS 2.1 or above, or iOS 4.0 (expected to be available from early March), or any PC with a browser, including Internet Explorer 6 or above or Firefox 3.6 or above. Applications can be made online at www.karada.ft.nttcloud.net (Japanese only).
Each day, the user takes photos of their meals with a mobile phone and then the service uses the pictures to automatically estimate calories, nutrition type and quantity—a world’s first—based on guidelines set by Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food, Forests and Fisheries. The service also estimates how many calories are burned while walking each day by using the GPS location function and acceleration sensors in the person’s mobile phone. Users manually enter their daily weight, and all data is stored on a server for quick, easy reference.
Based on this data, the service periodically recommends levels of exercise and types of meals to help the person achieve their specific health goals, all on a cloud basis. The recommendations, sent to the user’s mobile phone on a push basis, are tailored to each user and presented in a rich format using videos and other visual content.
The service is compatible with Twitter and Facebook to enable users to share and even compare data with others for extra motivation to maintain diets and healthful habits. Data can be quickly accessed after logging into an account on Google, Yahoo! Japan or mixi, or any NTT Group or partner company, including NTT Com, NTT DOCOMO and NTT Resonant.
In the first phase of the trial, the service provides calorie intake and walking records, weight charts, comparisons with others’ data, before/after data, general recommendations for exercises and meals, and links to popular social networks. Additional features will be added in early March, such as correlated graphs of calories consumed and burned, and tailored recommendations for exercises and meals.source
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