LAS VEGAS—Smartwatches and wearables worn on the wrist may be convenient, but they can easily miss a lot of body movements. If you're a golfer, skater, swimmer, or the like, you move with more than just your wrist when you train or compete. The 3D motion tracking startup Notch is trying to fix this by capturing most of the movement missed by traditional trackers. The company just started shipping its Notch sensor pack that has six small, triangular sensors meant to be worn on different parts of the body in order to track and visualize the movement of the user in real-time.

At the center of Notch's technology are the sensors that weigh less than 10g each. Every sensor has an accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass inside. They snap into holsters on thin straps that you wear on various body parts, and these straps are very similar to heart rate monitoring chest straps, but with more elasticity so they can stretch and fit snugly to your body. When connected to the Notch smartphone app, users can pick a movement configuration (or create their own) to follow and the sensors will capture and map their movement to the app. You can wear up to 18 Notch sensors at once, but when you wear just two sensors, you can see your movements in real-time via the app. Movements captured with three or more sensors get stored in each sensor's internal memory to be synced the next time you open the app. Notch sensors can be worn up to six hours at a time before they need to go back into the carrying case to be recharged.

3D motion capturing is the core of Notch's technology, and the startup wants coaches, therapists, and others to take it and run with it. Notch is currently shipping orders of its $379 six-sensor kit to developers and professionals who want to adapt the technology for their own use cases. With the kit, developers get the SDK and the Notch app ready to work for them—they can build entirely new apps surrounding the 3D motion tracking technology and even take apart the Notch app and modify parts of it to use in their own applications.

Especially considering Notch sensors are waterproof, its potential for sports tracking is clear. The technology is already being used by the golf company 4D Motion Sports. But Notch's potential uses in healthcare could be more nuanced. Founder Stepan Boltalin has already worked with healthcare professionals who want to use Notch kits to help patients in physical therapy, patients with prosthetics, and patients with other injuries or issues where movement monitoring is key. Notch could give healthcare professionals a more efficient way to monitor patients' movements, as well as a more clear visual way to show patients how they should be moving.

Boltalin also sees Notch's potential in mobile VR. For systems like Google's Daydream VR or Samsung's Gear VR, Notch sensors could turn your body into the controller. For example, two Notch sensors attached to your wrists could map strikes in a virtual reality boxing game, removing a traditional controller from the mix entirely. Depending on the type of VR game or experience, multiple Notch sensors could be used to make your entire body the controller (or otherwise mappable by the VR system) without the need for external cameras or extra equipment.

For now, Notch is mostly being used by developers and professionals who are creating their own apps incorporating the technology, but there's nothing stopping a regular consumer from buying a six-sensor kit and playing around with it. Hopefully in the future we'll see more fitness and sport tracking apps come out that use Notch as its wearable device, since it would expand the scope of wearables to well beyond the wrist. And even if it doesn't become as big as any Fitbit tracker, Notch could find a niche with professional athletes, healthcare providers, or mobile VR companies as an easy to way map and translate 3D motion data.

Notch's sensor pack is available now for $379, or about £345 including shipping to the UK.

Listing image by Valentina Palladino