Author: Julie Campbell

The MLB has now given its approval for the use of wearables throughout its current season.

The Major League Baseball (MLB) playing rules committee for the sport has now given its approval for the use of either of two different wearable technology devices during the games throughout the current playing season.

The two wearable devices that have received the MLB’s approval aren’t exactly the usual Fitbit.

Instead, the first is the Motus Baseball Sleeve, which is wearable technology for gauging stress to the elbows of a player. The second is the Zephyr Bioharness, which monitors breathing and heart rates of the players. Aside from those two, the committee has also gone ahead to give their approval for a couple of sensors for the baseball bats. Those bat sensors are to be used on the field during workouts, as opposed to during the games themselves. The first of the sensors is from Blast Motion while the second is from Diamond Kinetics.

The goal is to use wearable technology to identify player habits that may eventually lead to injuries.

That said, the players union has expressed some concern with regards to the use of wearables and maintaining player privacy. It wants to ensure that the information collected by the teams will respect the privacy of the players. Both sides of this discussion have agreed that there will need to be talks throughout the bargaining that will occur this year.

At the time of the writing of this article, none of this information had been officially announced. Instead, people with knowledge of this subject were willing to share what they knew with the media in exchange for anonymity.

Technically, this is not the first time the sleeve wearable tech received approval. Last year, the committee gave provisional approval for that device. That said, this does represent the first time that full consent was given for the use of this or any other wearable device by the MLB.

The committee that gave the approval for the wearable technology device use consisted of Chris Antonetti from Cleveland, John Schuerholz from Atlanta, Terry Ryan of Minnesota, and John Mozeliak from St. Louis.

At the moment, this tech is still in its pilot phase but the hope is to be able to roll it out in the future.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA), in partnership with EZ-Link and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) have recently brought a trial using NFC technology transit fare to a close and are moving on with a pilot project.

This will allow transit riders to be able to use their smartphones to pay to get from point A to point B.

Compatible mobile devices with NFC technology embedded will be able to use the contactless payment readers on the MRT, LRT and public buses. This type of fare will also be available at any of the over 30,000 EZ-Link acceptance points such as at food and beverage and retail outlets in addition to many taxis. The use of an NFC SIM makes it possible to transform a cell phone into a kind of mobile device-based EZ-Link card. That allows them to use the smartphone in the same way that riders previously used their plastic cards.

The NFC technology based option also allows for additional features regarding their transit use.

For instance, through the associated app, transit riders can also check their EZ-Link balance, view their transaction history and refill the amount they have in their account for paying their fares.

According to Chew Men Leong, LTA chief exec, “This is a milestone in the use of NFC technology in public transit in Singapore,” adding that, “We have been testing various innovative fare payment systems, and bringing these NFC SIMs and mobile phone models into the public transit ticketing environment to bring greater convenience to commuters through new and convenient ways to pay for travel.”

The trial for the use of this mobile ticketing service initially came to a close in February. That testing involved the use of the service by more than 1,000 users through 15 different NFC enabled mobile devices fitted with the near field communication SIM. All told, they registered more than 30,000 transactions with these devices and the app and a pilot is now starting in order to begin the roll out in the future.