Google May be Working a ‘Google Coach’ for Health and Fitness

BY Evan Selleck

Published 15 Aug 2018

Google Coach and Wear OS

As smartphone companies like Google and Apple try to put a bigger focus on health and fitness, of course it makes sense that Google would try to incorporate artificial intelligence into that effort.

According to a report this week from Android Police, Google is working on a project known internally as “Project Wooden”. This may or may not be called Google Coach when it launches, but from the sounds of it this is a pretty big initiative on Google’s part to try and jump ahead in the health and fitness department, especially as it relates to smartwatches and wearables.

Google Coach will be designed to provide information proactively, which isn’t too surprising. The feature will also allegedly be able to recommend workout routines, suggest new exercises based on past workout sessions, and track your progress along the way. Google Coach will also be able to keep tabs on your nutrition, too, and even recommend foods to eat:

“Google Coach will also help monitor your nutrition and recommend foods. For example, you might be able to get a healthy order recommendation for a meal out based on your location and patterns. If you prefer to cook at home, Coach could instead generate a weekly meal plan and shopping list, and beam it all right to your email. Google suggests that Coach might even be able to use your calendar data to figure out how many meals it needs to plan.”

Google will also trim back notifications. Rather than offering up individual pieces of information on a daily basis, it may just lump things together in one notification. So instead of seeing individual prompts for taking medication, your step count, to stand, or other things like that, you’ll just get one with all of those elements in one notification.

Google Coach sounds like it’s being designed for Wear OS, the smartwatch platform previously known as Android Wear. You will probably be able to use your phone to keep tabs on your data, but the wearable will reportedly be a necessity for tracking information.

What do you think of the idea of Google Coach? Hope it sees the light of day?

[via Android Police]