Hyd-based Hug Innovations awarded patent for its gesture control tech for safety

Hyderabad-based wearables and IoT startup Hug Innovations has been awarded a patent on Safety Monitoring of Individual using gestures on a wearable device. This patent provides Hug Innovations exclusive rights to build develop wearable devices, which can raise safety alarm using Gesture control technology.

Hug was founded by Raj Neravati back in 2016 with the thought of launching a safety app. And after deep research and development, Hu pivoted to becoming a gesture-control technology and device startup, which developed the world's first gesture-controlled smartwatch. 

The patented technology involves a new innovative protection method to raise safety alarm using gesture control. While this may sound similar to the technology seen in X-Box or PlayStation, these devices use a camera to track movements, while Hug uses a gesture technology that can detect hand movements with relative motions and doesn’t require a camera.  

Raj says that this technology is built with ability to track hand movements based on relative motion combined with Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Contextual Intelligence.

“The wearables space is very crowded today and a unique innovation in this space is a massive challenge. Our patent combines gesture control technology with safety. It is the ability to raise SOS using gestures,” says Raj, adding that Hug is the only company in the world that can perform touchless interactions in virtual reality and augmented reality-based applications.

And not just safety alarms, this technology also has the ability to control IoT-based devices such as smart appliances, drones, computers, etc. This technology, Raj claims, can be used in controlling drones without losing line of sight.

Hug, which started off as a B2C company has developed four consumer products: Hug Smartwatch, Hug Elan (Fitness Tracker), Hug Fit (Entry level fitness tracker), My Buddy (kids tracker in partnership with Eurokids). It has an active customer base of more than 30,000 user

Hug has also built 16 unique gestures and can control over 20 applications. Having moved to the B2B segment, it is now building healthcare and military defense applications using this technology. It has another 6-8 patents in the pipeline that combine AI with IoT.

In future, Hug aims to create a developer platform and create a community of developers to extend the applications and features of this technology.